


Snickerdoodles

by PersephoneVerne



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, AvaLance, Established Relationship, F/F, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Queer Themes, Team as Family, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-02-10 04:04:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 43,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18652543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersephoneVerne/pseuds/PersephoneVerne
Summary: In 4x12, Sara rescues Ava from Neron, then saves her from purgatory - but what happened to Ava when she was kidnapped, in the time she was held captive? And how does Sara help her navigate the aftermath?





	1. Whistle on the Wind

**Author's Note:**

> First chapter, gotta lay that foreshadowing on thick

Chapter 1: Whistle on the Wind       
  
  
_\- Then -_  
  
  
    The night was unseasonably cold - insultingly so, or so it seemed to Ava as she stormed out the doors of the Time Bureau. _Leave of absence? Who the hell is he to strongly suggest that I take a leave of absence?_ Her thoughts were a tornado, all force and no direction. Disorganized, destructive - everything she hated to be, a state of mind she worked so hard to avoid. Control, she liked control, but now her stomach felt queasy as she felt the threads of that control, which she stitched into her life so carefully, fraying at the edges. And now the cold - salt to her proverbial wounds.  
  
    All force, no direction: her mind rocketed from thought to thought, each one feeling less like a contemplation and more like a head-on collision.  
  
   _\- Sara, and the look on her face when Ava had told her to go._  
  
_\- Hank, rising from the chair behind his desk with all the physical authority of a high-school principal and all the professional authority to rip away the career she had so tirelessly constructed for herself, that she devoted herself to, that she loved. Hank cutting her off as she rose, too - tired of his lectures about regulations and how severely she’d broken them, or more pressingly, how the Legends had broken them - and she tried to remind him how much the Legends did for the Bureau, who invaluable they were, how their motivations to save Konane had been well-intentioned, even if their methods had been less than ideal._  
  
    She argued with herself as she walked to her car. _I said to him everything I should have said to Sara. God, why couldn’t I have just told her those things, instead of taking his side?_ The sidewalk was less crowded than usual; Hank had kept her late, lecturing on and on about the “integrity of the mission” and the “sanctity of their work.”  
  
   _I took his side when arguing with Sara because I was doing my job - why couldn’t she see that I’m doing the best I can? I’m not responsible for Hank’s actions? Even if his actions are reprehensible…_ _ugh._ Ava rubbed her temples and quickened her stride, head throbbing, seemingly from the pressure of all the tension within. _Hurting magical creatures? What the hell, Hank?_ Faster she walked, and faster the torrent of thoughts came.  
  
_\- A thorn against her tongue as Sara plucked a rose from a nearby bouquet and placed it between her teeth, an admittedly smooth - but utterly infuriating - attempt to stop Ava’s arguments as they spun and dipped and twirled each other across the dance floor._  
  
_\- Finally letting her cool facade crack, letting some emotion through the professional exterior, letting her voice raise in volume until it matched his, and she was looking Hank in the eye and not backing down, until he stepped back, paused, and then, quietly, told her that he “highly recommended she take a leave of absence,” and that she should “gather what she needs from her desk for a week.” Why? “It seems to me like you need some time to sort out your priorities.”_  
  
    In the quiet of the night, odd sounds felt amplified: her own heavy, solid footfalls on the pavement as she crossed to the parking lot; a rustle of wind through the trees that lined the walkway, sending a chill spidering up her spine. Arriving at the parking lot, Ava began navigating towards her car, which she had no trouble locating, since the lot was nearly empty. _God, what was the hour?_ The irony of the Director of the Time Bureau not knowing the time was not lost on her as she glanced at her wrist for an answer: 11:17. _Already?_ A wave of dizziness swept over her suddenly, and she reached an arm out, her hand finding the pole of a street light on the grass island halfway through the lot. It flickered as she leaned against it.  
  
     _When did I last eat?_ Ava wondered, at first idly, then more seriously as her brain didn’t immediately supply her with a response. _Shit, did I eat today?_ She stood there, pausing, recalibrating, walking back through her day and not reaching a meal until she recalled breakfast. _If you could call it that. A granola bar and a banana? Was that really all?_ As if to punctuate her realization, her stomach growled, presumably in protest to its seeming abandonment, and for the first time that day, Ava allowed herself to fully check in with her body.  
  
    Head: like a dam just as the floodgates began to crack. Stomach: empty. Her muscles felt sore and kind of tight, likely a combination of stress and fatigue. Feet: about to swell out of her shoes. _One of these days I’ll have to draft an amendment to the dress code - professionalism is one thing, but if I’m going to be doing as much cardio in these shoes as I have been recently, what with saving the timeline and all that, I think some sneakers would be well within my rights to demand._ Neck: stiff. Legs: heavy, wooden, rusted. Heart…  
  
     _Hollow._ Unbidden, unwanted, a knot of emotion rose in her throat, but she swallowed it down. Part of her wanted so badly to call Sara, to go home to her, with her, to melt into her arms and let that feeling of security carry her into tomorrow, when she could sort out everything that was going on in an orderly manner. But then, dammit, Sara was one of the issues right now, and… Ava sighed, slowly. She didn’t want to still be mad, but for some reason, she was, the anger still hot in her veins, so strong that it brought a little tremor to her fingers.  
  
    Was that from anger at Sara, though? Or the rest of it? Or just the hunger?  
  
   _Probably all of the above._  
  
     _Time. I need time. And food. What do I have left in my fridge?_ Her temples throbbed again; even the effort of thinking that far ahead seemed too great, at the moment. _Guess I’ll see when I get there_.  
  
    The street lamp flickered again, and Ava shivered, suddenly aware that she was alone in the Time Bureau parking lot at nearly half past eleven at night. Though she had a habit of pushing work hours late, that seemed to be a trend among upper-level Bureau employees, and she had grown accustomed to walking out with the same elevator group, nodding to the same pedestrians on the walkway. Bordering on midnight was pushing it, though, even for chronic Bureau over-achievers. Now the lot was desolate, and the night was dark. Ava felt her heartbeat quicken, just a flutter, and she whipped her head around, scanning the lot and its edges, shrouded in the shadows of the row of trees lining the walkway from the Bureau building and the looming edifices of Washington DC. The city - at least this district, full of government offices - never fully fell asleep, packed with people whose job it was to be awake so the remainder of the country could slumber peacefully. Still, this corner of it seemed to be, for the moment, at rest; she saw no one from her vantage point in the middle of the lot, not in any direction.  
  
    Ava released her grip on the street lamp; it had been tighter than she’d thought, and she watched the color return to her knuckles, curling and uncurling her fingers as she crossed the final distance to her car. A siren sounded in the distance; somebody blared a horn. Somewhere on another street, someone was whistling, and the tune carried to her ears in a frigid wind that blew her hair off to one side and turned up the collar of her coat.  
  
    She reached her car - finally - and fumbled with the keys, digging them from her pocket, finding the unlock button, and clambering in. Shutting the door felt like closing the world out; the ambient sounds of the night were abruptly cut off. If only it were that simple. If only I could close a door, lock a file cabinet, store all of my anxieties neatly away.  
  
    But that was the thing about anxieties, wasn’t it? They weren’t neat, they were unruly, and persistent, and if you didn’t turn to address them when they tapped on your shoulder, they grew claws and tried more insistently to win attention.  
  
    Ava turned the key, and the engine came to life. As backed out of her spot and navigated out of the lot, the silence of the car’s interior suddenly felt stifling, and she cracked the window, despite the chill, breathing in the icy air. The sounds of the night were more muted, with the window glass still mostly up between her and the rest of the world, but even as she drove and her vehicle carried her away from the Time Bureau premises, a song lingered on the wind.  
  
     _What is that song?_ The tune seemed to lodge in her mind and stick there, like a fly in amber. The name came to her as she turned out onto a road with some actual signs of life on it, cars waiting at a traffic light, a lone cyclist zipping along the roadside.  
  
     _Pop Goes the Weasel?_ Ava groaned aloud, waiting for the light to change. Perfect. Just what I need. The one song that it notoriously difficult to get out of your head. At long last, the light turned green. As much as she wanted to floor it until she reached her door, it appeared that the person ahead of her was in no such hurry; so, Ava inched down the road, alone with her thoughts and the sliver of cold air slipping through her window, the damn song stuck in her head on a loop. It was almost as if she could still hear the whistling, even as she continued down the road towards home. 


	2. Last Meal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter, time to dial up that sweet, sweet suspense

Chapter 2: Last Meal  
  
  
_\- Then -_  
  
  
    Ava didn’t bother to flick the hall light switch as she shut her front door behind her. The door felt heavy and made a solid thud as she closed it, and she leaned back against it briefly as she gently tossed her work bag to the side by the umbrella stand, head pressing back against the wood, everything about tonight feeling somehow so final and so uncertain all at once. She was at a pivoting point, she’d realized on the drive home: with her job, sure, but most importantly - most pressingly - with Sara. The weight of that knowledge, or rather the lack of knowledge, the not knowing how this was going to work out, it made her chest feel tight, like she couldn’t quite get enough air in her lungs no matter how hard she tried.  
  
     _Food._ It was the one thought that kept surfacing in her mind that wasn’t tied to the chaos of the rest of her life, and now she clung to it, seizing on the distraction. This was something she could address; this was one thing she could definitively cross off her list. _Control. I’ll take it where I can_.  
  
    Ava navigated the mostly-dark hallway by muscle memory, dropping her keys in a little bowl on a side table, whose only other decoration happened to be a photograph of her and Sara, laughing faces framed so they were the first thing anyone saw when coming through the door. Normally the picture made her smile, but tonight, as a moonbeam from the patterned glass alongside the door struck the frozen scene, it just brought a painful squeezing sensation to her heart. Ava reached a hand out to - what? To turn it facedown? Her fingers brushed the edge of the frame, then wandered down, grazing the glass that covered the photograph, the face of the woman who wasn’t here now, who’d made her blood boil earlier… who she couldn’t get out of her head. Ava let her hand fall, let the frame stand, and made her way to the kitchen.  
  
    She tugged the fridge door open, and the lights inside blinded her for a second, sending another lance of pain through her skull. The headache hadn’t improved on the drive home; in fact, it seemed to have grown worse, and the situation wasn’t helped by that god-damn song that she couldn’t seem to shake. Normally, a song got stuck in her head because she couldn’t remember all the lyrics, so if she just looked them up and ran through it all once, the annoyance would face away, but who knew all the words to ‘Pop Goes the Weasel?’  
  
   _I suppose that’s the kind of thing people learn as kids, Ava thought wryly. I’ll add it to the list of things I missed out on, by being a clone._  
  
    Her vision swam, and she took a second to focus on what she had in the fridge. Clearly it had been some time since she went grocery shopping. Her search was met with a half-filled carton of milk, a tupperware with a toss-salad she’d made the other day, a nearly-empty bag of shredded mozzarella cheese, and an aluminum-foil-covered dish with leftover lasagna. It wasn’t a hard decision, and three minutes later she found herself staring at a rotating plate of lasagna as it re-heated in the microwave. As the timer counted down, she considered pouring herself a glass of wine, but another throb of her head made her scrap the idea. The microwave sounded and she reached in, then recoiled with a hiss as she snatched her hand away from the hot edge of the plate. _Just what I need, a burnt hand_ , she thought. _What a fitting end to the day._ She flipped the kitchen light switch on and she examined the skin, but aside from some slight redness, it seemed okay.  
  
    Ava ran her hand under cold water for a moment, then poured herself a glass of it and downed half of it in one swallow. She grabbed the bowl with an oven mitt, along with a fork from the dishwasher she’d meant to unload this morning, and practically collapsed into her chair at the kitchen counter. The first bite nearly burned her tongue, but the effect of finally getting some sustenance in her body was instantaneous, and she ate ravenously.  
  
    About halfway through her meal, Ava paused, feeling a little more rejuvenated for the first time all evening. Her mind still felt full, but not quite at the spill-over point anymore. Amazing what a little food can do. Struck with an inspiration, she went to get her work bag from where she’d tossed it by the front door. Returning to her chair by the counter, she rummaged through it until she found a pen and a spiral notepad with yellow paper. Alternating between shoveling forkfuls of lasagna into her mouth and scribbling on the notepad, she set about making a list.  
  
    Ava liked lists. They were neat, they were orderly, they were excellent organization strategies, and they offered the chance to keep track of achievements, even minor ones, by crossing out items that had been taken care of. And for right now, when everything else going on in her life felt so large, so difficult to tackle - well, here was a way for her to start reclaiming control.  
  
    The first bullet point seemed to write itself, and once her pen had stopped moving, she stared at it, letting the words on the page sink in, in a way she hadn’t allowed herself to process the thought earlier. Item number one on her list: “Apologize to Sara.”  
  
    In her head, Ava went back to their fight earlier in the evening, how angry she’d been with Sara about putting her in a hard situation at work, but more importantly, how hurt she’d been that Sara hadn’t told her the plan, and what she knew about Konane in the first place. _I was angry, more than anything, that she left me out of that,_ Ava realized as she examined her own feelings with the clearest mind she’d had in hours. She and Sara were supposed to be a team, to have each other’s backs, to be on the same side, but it was hard to do that when Sara went behind her back. And coming into her office, offering homemade snickerdoodles and meeting her with that face, apologetic but not for the right reasons, if only Sara had just talked to her instead of talking at her and expecting Ava to immediately jump to her side, without considering the other dynamics to the situation, to their situation… _And me, what was I thinking? I supported Hank’s side out of instinct, not because I agree with him or his actions, not at all, but because Sara and I just felt so separate in that moment and I didn’t feel like I had anywhere else to go, but god, the things I said, I didn’t mean them, it came out all wrong…_  
  
    Ava sighed and rubbed her temples, the lasagna plate scraped empty and pushed to the side. _This isn’t going to solve itself tonight,_ she reasoned, and besides, she knew that if she didn’t turn her attention to something else, she’d waste away hours in this rabbit hole. _I need to talk to her_ , Ava resolved. _That’s how adults solve problems, that’s how we work through things with people we love: we listen and we learn and we move forward together._ However, none of that was going to happen tonight _\- or tomorrow, even_ , Ava thought. _I think we both need a little time, for this one. Time and a little space._ A few days, she decided. _Four? Five?_ Enough for them both to cool off some. The look on Sara’s face when she’d asked her to leave her office floated to the forefront of her mind again, and Ava winced. _Maybe three days._ God, she missed her already.  
  
    To force herself to move on from that line of thought, at least for now, Ava once again bent over the little notepad and added some more bullet points, more manageable ones. _Unload the dishwasher. Go to the grocery store. Finish the stack of reports she’d brought home from her desk at the Bureau. Review the seven case files that had been submitted to her today._ _Take out the trash._ Each item she added to list illustrated exactly how much she had left to get done, and some might find that even more intimidating than before it was written down, but for Ava, every added bullet point was one of those unruly thoughts laid bare. Clear, concise. If it was on the paper, it could be crossed off. She could do it. _I can do it._ The panicked, overwhelmed feeling had begun to subside into something more familiar, and much more productive. Yes, her life still felt like it was in a state of relative disarray, but this was her mess, and she could clean it up. _I can do this._  
  
    She wrote quickly but neatly, the ink smudging a little as she moved from one line to the next, every new bullet point like a stone taken off the weight on her chest, until out of nowhere, her stomach growled again. At first she was surprised - _but then, I really shouldn’t be, that lasagna was the only real meal I’ve had all day,_ she surmised. She wished then that she had brought home the tupperware of snickerdoodles that Sara had left on the filing cabinet in her office. Ava had almost taken them on her way out the door, but in a flash of residual anger, she’d left them there. It was the principle of the thing, she’d told herself at the time.  
  
    Now she just wanted cookies.  
  
    Ava started to rise from her chair - the fridge didn’t hold much promise, from what she’d seen, but the cabinet had a 50/50 chance of revealing a nearly-empty sleeve of Oreos - but then  something caught her eye, the corner of something poking out from among the files and miscellaneous office supplies in her purse, and she slid back down into her chair. She put the bag on her lap and rummaged through it, taking out the files and the rest of the items and laying them out on the counter, until her hand grasped - there, a corner, a rectangular shape.  
  
    With a slight tremor in hands, Ava pulled the tupperware with the snickerdoodles out of her bag. Her heart rate jumped, like a lurch in her chest, senses suddenly on high alert, bringing the unbroken stillness of her house around her into sharp focus. She had left the snickerdoodles in her office; it was a decision she’d made, she remembered it clearly, and yet here they were, buried at the bottom of her bag. The purse had been over her arm as she left her office, and beside her in the car on the way home; there had been no opportunity for someone to have slipped the container in the bag without her noticing, and yet, somebody had. _The only time it was out of my sight was when I dropped it by the door when I got here._  
  
     _…Which means there’s someone in the house._  
  
    That realization was more than enough to set off alarms in her head, but the prickling of fear at the base of her neck wasn’t just because of what she found in her purse - it was also what she didn’t find. Her gun was there, which brought her a moment of relief, but that was quickly followed by an increased sense of panic as she whipped it out and checked the magazine.  
  
   _Someone had taken all the bullets out of her gun._ The weapon was empty. So far as protecting her went, it now had about as much potential as the fork she’d eaten her lasagna with. And to finish off the trifecta - Ava turned the entire bag upside-down, letting the contents spill out over the countertop just to be sure - yes, her phone was missing, too.  
  
    Ava dove across the counter, reaching over it and down into the sink, fingers grasping until she found what she was looking for: the handle of the knife she’d used to chop vegetables for the salad that now sat in the fridge the other day. It wasn’t made to be a weapon, but it was big, and it was sharp, and right now, it was all she had. Ava gripped it tightly and spun around, surveying her apartment warily.  
  
    Even through all her flurried motion, her realization, her transition into a state of alarm, the rest of the apartment had been silent. There was no creak of a footstep on the floor above her, or on the stairs; no click of a gun aiming at her head, no scrape of a knife being slid out of its sheath. That was what scared her most, as she spun slowly, eyes raking over every inch of the space around her, darting over every corner, hesitating at every shadow. The only light on was the one in the kitchen, a bright yellow bulb glaring down over the table and casting a glow on the countertop where she’d eaten. Beyond that lamp’s reach, the remainder of the apartment was a patchwork of scattered moonbeams and hazy darkness. Her eyes flicked to the clock above the stove. It was nearly two in the morning. A minute ago, she had been just about ready to call it a night, to finally change out of her work clothes and sink into bed, hoping that the softness of her pillows would offer some relief to the stiffness in her neck. Now she was wired, electricity humming through her veins. The hairs on her arms stood up as she scanned her surroundings again and again, slowly stepping out from behind the counter, towards the middle of the kitchen.  
  
    There was no one. Not in any direction. She cast glances down the hall to the front door, where she’d come in; up the stairs, as far into that corner at the top as she could see; the alcove with the cabinets where she kept spare towels. Nothing. Her accelerated pulse brought a flush of heat to her face, a rush of noise to her ears, but around her, the apartment was silent. Still. Ava spun again, brandishing the knife, her other arm braced before her, hand curled into a fist. Then -  
  
    A light clattering, like a nickel dropped to the floor. _No, not a nickel - something a little heavier, like a marble._ Whatever it was, it didn’t roll, it just stuck where it landed. Ava’s heart rate spiked and she turned on her heel towards the sound. Towards the door.  
  
    A moment ago, the hall had been empty, she was sure of it; there wasn’t anything to hide behind, just the one side table the height of her waist with the picture of her and Sara, and another a little further inside with a small lamp positioned on it. And there was no way to get to the door without crossing her line of sight, especially since she’d been scanning her surroundings for a few minutes now, tensely, thoroughly. Nobody could have arrived at that spot without her seeing - and yet, there, a figure had appeared, a shadow, a silhouette in the dark. A man stood in her hallway, between her and the door, and as her breath caught in her chest, he took one slow step forward, then another. A second clattering sound came. Step. The clattering again. Then: a low whistle, slow notes in a darkly familiar tune, but slightly off-key, and the notes ground against her mind, as if causing actual friction.  
  
    Her headache intensified, and a nausea rose in her stomach, but she forced it down. It was the song, she realized with a sinking feeling. The same song she’d heard in the parking lot, the music on the wind. The man took another step, and something else clattered to the floor at his feet. _What is it?_ She couldn’t tell, not until he crossed from the shadow of the hallway and into the glow of the kitchen light.  
    Bullets. He was holding the bullets from her gun, and dropping them one by one onto the floor.


	3. Glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter three - and so it begins

Chapter 3: Glass 

  
_\- Then -_

  
    She didn’t know what she expected him to do - lunge forward, attack her, pull out a weapon? But what she didn’t expect was for him to pause at the edge of the hall, at the entrance to the kitchen, and lean nonchalantly against the wall, one arm up to support his weight, one ankle crossed coolly over the other. And she certainly hadn’t expected to recognize his face.

  
    He regarded her evenly, but she must have shown the recognition on her face, because as she realized who she was staring at, his eyes lit up, and a grin tugged at the corners of his mouth.

  
    “Desmond,” she said, the name coming out of her mouth barely above a whisper. The man raised an eyebrow, then looked down, surveying himself.

  
    “Yes, I wear him rather well, don’t I?” he said, extending one arm out in front of him and flexing his hand, as if testing to make sure all the fingers worked. He dropped the arm and glanced back up to Ava.

  
    “ _Wear_ him?” she asked without moving, holding the knife out between them, though still the intruder made no advance towards her.

  
    “Yes,” Not-Desmond said with a nod, “I’m just living here for a while. It’s a good body, conventionally attractive, strong, reliable. And of course,” his eyes flashed coldly, “Walking around in it does a number on old Johnny.” His grin widened, then he paused.

  
    “Oh, but what kind of manners are these, I apologize,” he said, and he brought his arm down from where it had braced him against the wall. He extended his hand out towards her, even as Ava took two steps back. “Neron,” he said.

  
    He let his hand hang there before him for several seconds, and the time stretched on, until Ava spoke up.

  
    “You’re not Desmond, but you’re…wearing… his body,” she said. “That would make you -”

  
    Neron dropped his hand from between them and put it in his pocket, again leaning his shoulder against the wall. “A demon,” he said in a chipper tone, nodding as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Possessing the body of John Constantine’s lover, for all manner of assorted motivations, I assure you.” Neron made a flourish of a hand gesture before him to accentuate his words, and Ava felt queasy.

  
    “How do you know him?” Neron asked, and Ava blinked.

  
    “What?”

  
    “Desmond,” Neron said. “I wasn’t aware that you two had any kind of history.”

  
    Ava didn’t want to answer him, didn’t want to say another word to this literal demon who had broken into her home, wanted to be anywhere but here, but right now he wasn’t moving towards her, they were just talking. Talking meant more time to draw this out, to figure out a plan. Her mental gears turning in the back of her mind, she cleared her throat to answer him.     

 

“We don’t,” Ava said shortly. “I know his face from my files.”

  
    “Ah, right, that makes sense,” Neron nodded knowingly. “You’re all read up on the situation between John and Desmond, aren’t you? You’re read up on everything, I suppose, as Director of the Time Bureau.” Neron wasn’t even looking at her; he appeared to be examining his nails, absently picking at them. Ava shifted her weight a little more onto her back leg - a slightly more stable fighting stance - and the demon’s eyes flicked up in an instant, pupils dilated, attention sharp, and Ava’s breath hitched.

  
    “So that’s why you’re here?” Ava said quickly. Her mouth felt dry. She readjusted her grip on the knife. “Because I’m Director of the Time Bureau? You want information?”

  
    Neron’s features twisted into a smile again. “You’re half right, Miss Sharpe,” he said. Ava didn’t like the sound of her name on his tongue. “I am here because of your job. But,” he said, and he took a half-step forward, no longer leaning on the wall, facing her square-on, “It’s not information that I’m after.” He shrugged, hands in his pockets, eyebrows raised, but his eyes were cold as ever. “It’s you.”

  
    He was still too far to strike with her knife - which was good, since he was still too far to reach her, but unfortunate because his last comment, over all his others, chilled her to the core. If it was information he was after, well, Ava had trained for this, she felt relatively confident that she could talk herself out of the situation, whether by feeding him false intel, or giving him access codes that had alarms built in, so they would let the user in the system, but send an alert to security personnel indicating that the codes had been given under duress. A hostile operative seeking information, that was something the Bureau had protocols for, and Ava knew every Bureau protocol by heart. But a demon coming for her?

  
    “Why?” she heard herself ask, almost as if her vocal cords had elected to voice the syllable without the input of her brain.

  
    “Well, not all of you, I suppose,” Neron amended, his tone still hauntingly light. He tilted his head to the side, maintaining eye contact with her. “Just your body.”

  
    As a woman, that was a terrifying thing to hear from a man, and it was this fear that struck Ava first; it was followed by the more logical - _could logic be applied here, dealing with a literal demon?_ \- reason for Neron’s words.

  
    “You already have a body,” Ava said, feeling a sliver of pride when she successfully managed to keep her voice from shaking. She gestured at Neron with her free hand. “And you just told me you liked it. What do you want with mine?”

  
    Neron smiled again, widely this time, his white teeth gleaming, reminding Ava more like fangs than a real smile. He was like an animal baring his teeth.

  
    “You’re the Director of the Time Bureau!” he said, grandly, like he was announcing it out to a stadium. “The access you have to magical creatures, the control you have over the Bureau, the influence you have in Washington…” he paused. “The things I could do, with a body like that,” he mused, his voice suddenly low, hungry, drunk on the notions of power in his head, and even though he hadn’t physically struck her, it took all of Ava’s willpower not to flinch.

  
    “But alas…” Neron sighed, eyes flicking up and down her body once more in a way that made her skin crawl, “I don’t want it for me. I need your body for a friend. Tabitha. She’s - well, she’s coming to visit soon, it’s been planned for quite some time, and you see, everything’s been arranged save for the lodging.” He flashed her a wicked grin. “That’s where you come in, love.”

  
    Ava had been exercising patience, caution, even through the bone-deep fear that had begun to take root within her; in the absence of an immediate escape option, she’d chosen to wait it out, maneuver through the encounter, listen, learn what she could. Well, she’d heard enough. It was the “love” that did it, that snapped her into action so quickly it was like her muscles were pressed springs waiting to be released.

  
   _You can’t call me that_. Sara called her that, called over her shoulder as she said goodbye, next to her ear in the mornings, between kisses at any time of day. _Love_. It sounded wrong, on his lips. Ava had heard enough. _Time to go._

  
    Without warning, Ava launched herself backwards, vaulting over her kitchen table, around assorted furniture - the couch, a chair, a lamp that wasn’t turned on. She catapulted herself towards the back door, not taking the time to turn and see how closely the intruder was following her, that would waste precious seconds -

  
   _There._ The door handle glinted in the moonlight and she grasped at it, fingers fumbling briefly as she unhitched the locking mechanism, turning the knob desperately, pushing with all her might. The door wouldn’t budge. It barely even rattled. She kept turning the door handle, throwing her weight against the frame. _Why isn’t it working? Why isn’t it -_

  
    Ava chanced a glance over her shoulder, convinced that she would feel Neron’s grip on her arms any second, wrenching her away from her escape attempts, but was startled to see that he hadn’t moved at all. He still stood in the transition space between her front hall and her kitchen, hands in his pockets. His body language spoke of disinterest, nonchalance, but his eyes sang a different tune. They sparked with - what? Amusement? Satisfaction? Ava felt another flush in her face, though from renewed anger or the physical exertion, she couldn’t say.

  
    She spun back around, abandoning the uncooperative door and turning instead to the adjacent window. Shifting her grip on the knife in her hand, she drove the hilt forward with all of her strength, striking the glass like a hammer.

  
    It was thick glass, so she hadn’t expected it to shatter in one go, but her strike made no visible mark on the glass, no crack, nothing. Again she raised her arm, brought it down with all her might, felt the impact reverberate up her arm. Again, the window showed absolutely no signs of duress.

  
    A light suddenly flicked on, off to Ava’s side. She turned and saw that Neron had closed some of the distance between them; he now had crossed the kitchen, and stood by the lamp she had run past to get to this door. A couch extended lengthwise between them, that was all.

  
    Ava felt disheveled; her hair was falling into her face, and a bead of sweat traced its way down the small of her back. She was breathing heavily. Neron regarded her from the other side of the couch, looking bemused. Honestly, that scared her more than if he had run after her in a fit of rage. It would have been terrifying, but she knew how to handle herself in a fight, she knew how to deal with a person acting on those emotions. This… what the hell was she supposed to do with this?

  
    Neron raised a hand, gesturing at the door and the window, now illuminated. “Binding spells,” he said by way of explanation, and nodded at the door. When he made no effort to move towards her any more, she let her gaze flit over to where he was indicating, and saw a small black symbol about the size of her hand on the wood just above the knob. It appeared to have been etched there, either carved or burned somehow.  

  
    “That one means ‘lock,’” Neron continued. “A minor rune, but very effective, as you’ve seen.” He raised an eyebrow and jerked his chin towards the window. “That was a little trickier, I needed to lock it, but also prevent the glass from breaking.” Yes, Ava could see two runes on the window, one carved into the sill, the other - a different symbol, with fewer harsh lines and more curves - looking like it had been drawn on the glass with charcoal.

  
    “Still a minor rune, but considerably more challenging to perfect. It means ‘hold,’” Neron supplied.

  
    Ava’s heart raced. She cast her eyes around the newly-lit apartment and was appalled to see small binding spells on every visible barrier between her and the outside world. There was one on every window, and if it was etched into this door, she’d bet the situation was matched on the front door as well. Had they been there the whole time, since she’d been home? How had she missed them? But then, Neron had managed to simply appear in the front hallway, so she supposed that carving a few runes undetected was well within his realm of expertise. She inhaled sharply, but before she could speak, Neron interjected.

  
    “Before you scream, I’ll have you know that I’ve also placed wards along the street outside, which will have the effect of subtly preventing anyone from approaching the apartment while we’re in it, as well as sonic charms to keep sound originating inside from being heard outside.”

  
    A swooping sensation swept over Ava, and she reached out to steady herself by putting one hand on the edge of the couch. The other still gripped the knife’s handle, but it rested at her side for the moment. Through her heavy breathing and the rushing in her ears, it took Ava a moment to give a name to that sensation.

  
    Panic.

  
_How am I supposed to get out of this one, Sara?_

  
   _You’d know what to do. Improvisation is your middle name. You’re given critical missions to ensure the safety of the timeline, and eight out of ten times, you wing it - and it works. You’d be able to escape a demon, Sara. Why can’t I?_

  
    “If you’re powerful enough to get into my apartment, steal my weapon, and lock down the place,” Ava said, breaking the silence and hoping she sounded more confident than she felt, “Then why am I still here? Why waste time with banter, explanation? Why isn’t this Tabitha wearing me yet?”

  
    Neron’s eyes gleamed, and he spread his arms, as if welcoming the inquiry. “Glad you asked,” he commented. “You see, for a demonic possession to be successful,” Neron said in a professorial tone, “The host must be willing.”

  
    “Willing?” Ava echoed hoarsely, her voice betraying an odd coupling of bewilderment mixed with dawning horror.

  
    “Mmm, you see, two consciousnesses cannot occupy one body for any extended period of time, and hope maintain any kind of stable state. It’s just not sustainable. And as convenient as it would be, there unfortunately isn’t a way for me to simply make you go.” He must have noted Ava’s confusion, so he pressed on. “I cannot force your consciousness from your body,” he clarified. “So, my options are rather limited. Option A is to simply ask you if you would be a willing host.” Neron frowned. “Actually, I suppose I haven’t done that officially yet. Apologies.” His features smoothed over once again, and he spoke to her as if extending a lucrative business proposition.

  
    “Ava Sharpe, will you be so gracious as to willingly offer your body as a host shell for my esteemed companion and fellow demon Tabitha, acknowledging that this action will induce your consciousness into a dormant state within your own mind, eliminating all awareness, as well as any ability to control or access your sensory or motor functions for the duration of the demon’s residence in your body?”

  
     _God, he says it like he’s making a sales pitch,_ Ava thought, suddenly overcome with an intense urge to vomit at the notion. _Offer your body? Host shell? Loss of all awareness and motor control?_ She suppressed the urge to regurgitate her dinner, but couldn’t shop a shudder from shaking her shoulders, mind flooded with parallels between Neron’s words and her experience as a clone. Neron, surveying her reaction from across the room, seemed to misinterpret her response.

  
    “I can’t promise that it won’t hurt,” he said, “But I can promise that it will be quick.” He drummed the fingers of one hand on the back of the couch, one eyebrow raised.

  
     _Holy hell, this maniac actually expects an answer._

  
    “No,” Ava said clearly, and Neron’s brow furrowed. “You don’t have my permission,” she contineud. A plan had begun to materialize in her mind, but she was biding her time, waiting for the opportune moment. In the meantime, she tried to infuse steel into her voice. “You’ll never get my permission.”

  
    The demon sighed, and for an instant, Ava thought she made out a flicker of genuine disappointment flash across his features.

  
    “Well, they say to hope for the best, but plan for the worst,” Neron said. His gaze hardened. “I’m prepared for Option B.”

  
    “Which is?” Ava prompted him. He liked to talk. She used it to her advantage, mapping out her move. She’d only get one shot.

  
    “Option B is to wear down your defenses until your mind retreats to its dormant state of its own accord, or you beg me to send you there.” Neron grinned, but there was no malevolent humor in his expression now, only a chilling candor. “I will _break_ you, love. Carve your consciousness out of that body and then get Tabitha all settled where you used to be.” He cocked his head, as if feeding off the fear that Ava knew was plainly written across her face. Neron seemed poised to continue. “I will - ”

  
    Ava moved mid-sentence, mid-syllable, not waiting for him to pause again or take another step closer. Instead, she dodged the couch, deftly maneuvered through the room, through the kitchen down the still-shadowy front hall, straight for the front door. Like a parody sitcom laugh track from hell, she heard Neron’s laugh reverberate through the apartment. He knew she couldn’t get through the door. _He thinks it’s_ funny _to see me try._

  
    Except, Ava wasn’t aiming for the door.

  
    Instead, she threw herself a foot to the right, to the top left corner of the textured glass window alongside the front door. She honed directly in on the small black rune drawn onto the glass and frantically swiped at it with her sleeve, rubbing with all her energy. Now she heard it, heard him - footsteps approaching, he was crossing her apartment, not running as she had, but walking, taking the time to cross the distance. I’m worrying him. At least, that’s what Ava chose to believe.

  
    When she pulled her arm away, the symbol remained - but smudged, its edges blurry, its shape a little less defined. It couldn’t just be ordinary charcoal, then, or it would have all come off on the fabric of her shirt, but then again, this was a demon charm she was dealing with, so she limited her surprise and focused on the task at hand. Neron had crossed half the apartment; this would have to do.

  
    Ava raised the knife and again, just as she’d done to the back window, she brought the hilt down on the glass with all the force she could muster. It was enough force to break someone’s arm, she’d done it before in the field, _come on -_

  
    A crack.

  
    The window remained intact, but a fissure appeared, extending like a lightning strike out from the center of the rune. A seed of hope took root, and Ava didn’t hesitate: again, she struck, and again, and again, and the fissure was joined by another, then a third, and now it looked like a spiderweb sending tendrils of instability through the glass and through the spell that held it together, _one more strike should do it, just one more -_

  
    She barely registered his presence behind her, such was his speed, when she was on the precipice of shattering the window. A slightly darker shadow, that was all the warning she got, followed by what sounded like an animalistic growl, and then her head felt like it was on fire.

  
    Neron grabbed a fistful of her hair and wrenched his arm back with superhuman strength. Ava let out a strangled cry as she was thrown backwards down the hall, away from the cracked window. _So close_. Her arms flailing for anything to hold on to, anything to steady herself, get back on her feet. _Crash._ A plant in a vase by the door, knocked to its side. _Scrape._ A table with a lamp on it, torn from its position against the wall, while the lamp fell to the floor and the lightbulb cracked. It felt like her hair had nearly been ripped from her scalp. When she landed, stars exploded in her vision, and her shoulders slammed against the floor, though she managed to stop her head from snapping back.

  
    There was no more toying with her, it seemed, not anymore. Ava’s vision hadn’t stopped swimming, but she saw Neron’s figure advancing towards her, nearly on her, and she reached out, fumbling for the first thing she could find. A chair leg, up back behind where she lay on the ground. She gripped it tightly and threw it forward, anything to put an obstacle between herself and the demon.

  
    Neron swatted the chair to the side like it was no heavier than a pillow, but Ava used the time to scramble to her feet, stumbling backwards the whole time. _If I can just get to the back window, maybe -_

  
    Neron lunged for her, and she struck out with the knife, slashing across, then up. He dodged the first attempt, but the second grazed his arm, and the demon hissed in pain. Ava followed up with a punch directly to his recent wound, and Neron grunted at the impact. Then she drove the knife up, directly at his abdomen this time - can demons die from mortal wounds? Ava fully intended to find out - but in a vicious flurry of movement, he caught her wrist and twisted it back. Ava yelled out in pain as the strain became too much and her fingers lost their grip on the knife. It fell to the floor, but Ava didn’t hear the impact, because - still holding her wrist in a vice-grip with one hand - Neron drove his fist into her stomach.

  
    The air was expelled from Ava’s lungs, and they burned as she struggled desperately to inhale, to bring oxygen back to her muscles. She gasped for breath, and Neron took advantage of her incapacitation. _Slam._ Again he drove his fist into her, knuckles colliding with her side this time, and Ava doubled over. Her head was spinning; she tasted blood in her mouth, she’d bitten her tongue as her jaw clenched during one of the blows. She raised her eyes up, hair falling in her face, and Neron was there, right there, inches away, fire in his eyes. He grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed, and Ava flew back. There was no saving her head from the impact this time, and her eyes clenched shut with the force of it. Her skull hit a mirror on her wall and she heard the mirror crack, immediately followed by a searing pain on the back of her head, and she knew that this one had drawn blood. Her stomach heaved and as her head reflexively bent forward, she felt her hair pulled by the mirror, caught on the shards of glass, stuck to her own blood. She felt sick, but Neron was still there, and he didn’t give her the chance to recover.

  
    The demon’s arm shot out, fingers wrapping around her throat, and once the pressure started, it didn’t stop. Ava kicked, felt her foot impact his thigh, but he didn’t budge, didn’t drop his gaze from hers. Her hands grasped at his arm, beat against it, scraped it with her nails, but it was no use, and more spots were appearing in her vision, now, her own heartbeat louder in her ears as the rest of her senses began to dim.

  
   _No -_

  
    She kicked again, but her lungs were screaming out for air that wouldn’t come, and every blow she tried to land was weaker than the last.

  
    Ava’s eyes darted about the apartment, searching for anything to get her out of this, any weapon, any hope, but there was nothing in reach and her fingertips were cold and a high-pitched ringing had entered her ears and she couldn’t focus, the edges of shapes around her becoming hazy -

  
    There was nothing to grab on to, nothing to use as a weapon, nothing to do except drown into panicked oblivion as Neron choked her into unconsciousness, but as Ava faded and her senses slipped away, her frantic gaze snagged on one thing, and she clung to it, held onto it until her vision went black.

  
    Somehow, in all the violence and chaos, the framed photo of her and Sara had gone untouched, and Ava stared at it, that frozen scene of the two of them, happy, laughing, together.

  
_Sara._

  
_At least Sara’s safe._

  
    Such was Ava Sharpe’s last thought, before the oxygen deprivation became too much and she and lost consciousness, limbs going limp. Only then did Neron release his grip on her throat, deep bruises already forming where he’d held her, and he let Ava’s unconscious body fall heavily to the floor.


	4. Awake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fourth chapter: I wrote "Avalance" and "hurt/comfort" in the tags, and with this chapter, I deliver on that promise

Chapter 4: Awake 

  
_\- Now -_

  
    Walking away from the bridge of the Waverider, the celebratory chatter from the rest of the crew faded, and Sara gave Ava’s hand a little squeeze as they lapsed into a comfortable silence. Ava appreciated the touch, and this easy, reassuring closeness she had with the woman beside her. She’d missed this, so much. _So much_. It had been more than a hole in her heart, when they’d been separated - it had grown into an ache, something tangible, physical, and Ava only understood the magnitude of it now that it was healing. _Had healed._ They’d made some real progress together as they’d navigated her purgatory, and the simple joy accompanying those accomplishments was intoxicating.

  
    The soothing of that tension, however, unfortunately was not matched by a parallel easing of the other hurt that remained, and this fact became more and more clear to Ava as they put more distance between themselves and the bridge. She could feel bruises on and under her skin, in some places overlapping each other. Her limbs felt heavy, muscles utterly burned out. Ava was exhausted to the core. She felt like she had nothing left to give.

  
    Sleep. What she wanted most now was a long sleep, somewhere safe, somewhere warm. Safe and warm - now those were two things she hadn’t felt in two weeks, and as for sleep, well, that had become a stranger to her as well, and the effects were taking hold.

  
    “Ava?”

  
    Ava started and realized that they had stopped in the hallway of the Waverider. Sara was looking up at her, a little furrow of concern in her brow. “Did you hear what I asked?” Sara said, giving Ava’s and another light squeeze.

  
    “Hmm? No, I - I guess I didn’t.” Ava hadn’t even realized Sara had spoken at all. _I’m still lost in my head._ That thought scared Ava more than she cared to admit to herself, so she did her best to shake the notion and focus on her girlfriend.

  
    “I just wanted to confirm whether you’re staying here for the next few days,” Sara said. “Of course, you’re welcome to stay as long as you want,” she added hurriedly, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips before fading to a somber expression all too quickly, “But Gideon thinks it’d be best for you to stay under medical observation for a little while, and John wants to keep an eye on you in case there’s any lingering demon-y effects, and your house - ”  

     
    Sara ran her hand, the one not entwined with Ava’s fingers, through her hair, her gaze cast off to the side, distracted as if stuck on a memory. After a second, though, she shook her head and glanced back up at Ava with a tight smile. “Your house still needs some cleaning up, but don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of it.”

  
    Memories flashed through her head, disjointed: _a plant fallen to the floor, the vase cracked, the dirt within it scattered across the hardwoods. A chair on its side. A nearly-shattered window. A broken mirror_ \- Ava winced, remembering - _a broken mirror with her blood on the shards._

  
    God, that all seemed so distant, now. That fight, when Neron had come, when he’d taken her… those wounds had been overwritten, and new bruises had colored over the old. It was these fresher injuries that now clamored for her attention - or rather, never let her fully tear her attention away - but for Sara, Ava realized, the images of that chaos-strewn apartment must be present at the forefront of her mind. A barely audible sigh escaped Ava’s lips, but Sara noticed it, and she frowned, regarding Ava questioningly. Ava shook her head - as if that would be enough to keep the darker thoughts away - willing her features to form a half-hearted smile.

  
    “Okay, so Gideon and John want me to stay here, but what about - ”

  
    Sara didn’t let her finish, cutting her off with a kiss, unlacing her hand from Ava’s and reaching up, placing it lightly at the base of Ava’s neck, tugging her down as she stood on her toes to meet her. In a moment, the other arm was up around Ava’s shoulders too, pulling her closer. The first kiss was quick, soft, and it was followed by a second - deeper, but still tender. Ava felt an urgency in Sara’s movements, even as she detected an overlying sense of delicacy to the actions. _Delicacy. Like I’m fragile._

  
    Even though Sara was being gentle, so gentle, the physical contact reanimated the hurt in her body, and Ava winced. Sara felt it and started to pull away, but Ava stopped her with a touch, a hand on her arm, and this time it was Ava who tugged Sara into the kiss. Ava kissed her like she was trying to breathe her in, like Sara was oxygen that she had been deprived of for far too long.

  
    A muscle in her shoulder twinged suddenly and Ava couldn’t suppress a reactionary hiss of pain, and this time Sara did pull away, worry clouding her features.

  
    “Let’s get you settled in,” she said, taking Ava’s hand again. “You need to rest.” She led Ava the remainder of the way down the hall to her quarters. “That’s an order,” she added as they came up to the door, glancing over her shoulder up at Ava, but her tone was soft, and the words were accompanied by a little smile that made Ava’s heart flutter.  There was so much care in that expression. It was so earnest.

  
    Ava put her hands up in a tired mock surrender. “Trust me, Captain, I’m not resisting,” she said, passing through the doorway.

  
    Sara flicked a light switch, illuminating the room. The bed, which was where Ava turned first, was unmade, and looked like it had been left in a rush; the sheets were skewed to one side, as if they’d gotten caught on a foot trying to find the floor before being fully awake. Sara passed beside her and went to the dresser, pulling open one drawer, then another, rummaging through, grabbing a few assorted articles of clothing. After a minute she turned back to Ava, presenting a neat pile of folded clothes.

  
    “For you to sleep in,” she offered. “Pretty sure the shirt was originally yours anyway, and you either left it here on purpose, or I kept it for myself,” she said, grinning wryly.

  
    “Thank you,” Ava said, taking the pile. She stared down at it, the garments folded, their edges clean, the fabric soft, and Ava was suddenly struck by how incongruous she felt, to the clothes in her arms. Her body, unwashed and beat up as it was, didn’t match what they represented. _Order. Comfort. Rest._ Ava wanted nothing more than to welcome it, but at the same time, it felt foreign, and she hated that. _Why can’t things be like before? Why am I getting hung up on this?_

  
    “Hey, where’d you go?” Sara said, and Ava realized she had paused when taking the clothes. Ava forced a smile reached out, tucking some stray hair behind Sara’s ear.  

  
    “Nowhere, I’m right here.” I’m here, I’m safe, Ava told herself. “Just got distracted for a second…” she trailed off. “I think I’m gonna take a shower first. You go ahead and change, I won’t be long.” The urge to feel the water running over her body, to feel clean and fresh and herself again, was suddenly very strong.

  
    “All right, I’ll get the bed ready, then,” said Sara. “I’m here if you need anything, okay?”

  
    “Thank you,” Ava said, nodding once at her, then turned and entered the bathroom, flicking the lights on and shutting the door behind her with an audible click.

  
    Ava moved numbly, running a washcloth under water from the sink and pressing it to her face, then rubbing as though it could wash away all the exhaustion that she knew was clear there. When she brought the cloth away, she was leaning over, bent towards the mirror, hands bracing herself against the sink. Her reflection stared back at her and she studied herself, skin flushed red from the washcloth, eyes bloodshot from the tiredness, hair unwashed. Her jaw was a bit discolored along the left side - a bruise that had’t fully healed. She wondered how long it would take, before the woman in the reflection was the one she remembered being, the one she recognized.

  
   _I look like I’m playing dress-up._ The thought occurred to Ava as she compared the clothes she wore to the woman in the reflection staring back at her. The clothes were her own, a spare outfit she had left in Sara’s closet, and they, like the pajamas Sara had handed her earlier, felt right now like everything she wasn’t. They belonged on an Ava whose back was a little straighter, who wore the blazer like armor, who matched their air of authority. _Authority_. It had been two weeks since Ava had had any authority at all.

  
    Drawing in a shaky breath, Ava turned from the mirror towards the shower. She went to turn the knob, to get the water hot, but then dropped her hand. Better undress first, don’t want to waste water.

  
    Ava reached her hands up, grasping the front of her blazer, but when she moved her arms outward to slip it off her shoulders, her muscles tensed up, and she gasped sharply, dropping the fabric. Tears stung her eyes, though from the pain or the sensation of failure, she wasn’t certain. _Shoes. I’ll start with the shoes and go from there_.

  
    Ava sank to the floor, back against the wall, drawing her legs in criss-crossed and pulling at one of her heels. The shoe fit snugly, so she had to work at it, and this small exertion, too, put strain on her muscles. Every effort she underwent seemed to result in a magnified pain response from somewhere on her body, and when she finally managed to successfully free both her feet from the heels she’d been in, she thrust the shoes away from her with a grunt of frustration. Again, salt stung the corners of her eyes. As she reached up to wipe them away, her hand shook. She was breathing heavily, and _this was supposed to help me rest, god-damn it, but how can I shower if I can’t even take my fucking clothes off?_ She’d put them on just fine earlier, but sitting here now, Ava chalked that up to the euphoria she’d been overwhelmed with, the thrill of finally escaping purgatory and being back with the Waverider crew, back with the woman she loved.

  
    Her vision blurred and she blinked more tears out of them. When her sight cleared, she found herself staring at her feet. They were bare - she hadn’t been wearing any socks under the shoes. They’d been bare for two weeks, and they looked like it. There was dirt under the toenails, and smudges of wear on the skin. Ava took a deep breath and her body shook. Her vision blurred again, more tears threatening to fall, and Ava bit her lip, closing her eyes, bending her head back until it touched the wall.

  
    “S-” she began, but a knot in her throat cut her off. _Why now, why am I falling apart now?_

  
   _Because everything had gone so fast after I woke up, and Sara was there, and I went to celebrate with the crew, and I was so relieved that it was finally over, and now…_ Now things were slowing down, now her mind was catching up with the state of her body. _I have to deal with this now._

  
    Ava swallowed, throat burning with the emotion she was choking down. When she had regained her bearings at least enough to speak, she raised her voice.

  
    “Sara?” Ava called, eyes still closed, head still pressed back against the wall behind her. “Could you, um - ” she faltered. ‘Help me’ sounded pathetic, and she couldn’t bring herself to say it. “Could you give me a hand with something?” she tried.

  
    The doorknob turned so quickly that Ava’s first thought was wondering if Sara had been sitting outside the door the whole time. The door opened slowly, and Sara stepped into the bathroom. Ava watched Sara scan the room at eye-level, then find her, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, barefoot, still fully clothed on the floor. The expression on Sara’s face when she saw her there nearly broke Ava’s heart. Sara was at her side in an instant.

  
    “Ava,” she said, kneeling before her, lowering herself down to match Ava’s eye level. “What do you - ” Sara swallowed. “How can I help?” she asked softly.

  
    God, it would be so easy to cry. To pull Sara close, to bury her head in the woman’s shoulder, to let her arms hold her as she wept all the everything that she was feeling away. Ava was tempted, for an instant, and in that second, she almost lost the ability to decide, her emotions nearly welled over and made the decision for her, but then she subdued them. _For now._

  
    “I need you to help me - ” Ava started, then laughed a little, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “This isn’t going to be nearly as sexy as it could on any other night,” she interjected before continuing, come on, just spit it out - “But I need you to help me take my clothes off.”

  
     _Why had that been so hard to say?_ Asking for help had never been Ava’s forte, because asking for help meant that she _needed_ help, and someone who needed help, well, that wasn’t the image of a Time Bureau Director who had her life under control. But now it was said, and the words lingered in the air as Ava watched their meaning - and all that they implied - occur to Sara. Something hard flashed behind Sara’s eyes, quickly - _an emotion, a memory?_ Someone less acquainted with her would have missed it - but whatever that was, Sara pushed it away as she nodded. “Come here, it will be easier if you stand,” she said, and with that, she gingerly helped Ava to her feet. When they were both standing, Sara let Ava’s hand go for a moment, and turned towards the shower. Instead of turning the shower knob, however, she bent to start water for a bath instead.

  
    “Gideon, stop the water when the tub is full, and keep it hot,” Sara instructed the ship’s computer.

  
    “Yes, Captain,” came Gideon’s cool response. Satisfied, Sara straightened up and returned to Ava.

  
    “Here, let’s start with this,” Sara said. She stood in front of Ava, reached out to grip the hem of the blazer, and helped ease the garment off her shoulders, walking behind her to tug it off. Ava shrugged and it slipped off more easily. Goosebumps rose on her arms as the skin was exposed, and Ava shivered involuntarily. Sara folded the blazer and set it on the sink, then turned back to Ava.

  
    Ava got the sense that Sara was working very hard to keep her expression neutral, or at least to keep from reacting too strongly to what she saw, but she couldn’t keep her jaw from clenching slightly, and Ava knew Sara was taking in the bruising on her shoulder, the raw skin around her wrists. Sara stepped around to Ava’s side, close, her eyes fixed on something, and she lifted her fingers up to a swatch of skin on her upper left arm, which Ava could see in the mirror was mildly inflamed. The redness, she knew, was due to the injury there: a small black symbol, about three inches tall. A rune.

  
    Sara’s fingers brushed the rune, but when Ava flinched she retracted her hand quickly with a sharp intake of breath.

  
    “That’s no tattoo,” she said, her tone hard, after a few seconds’ pause. Ava shook her head no, then bowed it, eyes cast to the floor.

  
    “Is it like this one?” Sara asked, indicating at the square of gauze they had secured with medical tape over the upper left side of Ava’s chest, which covered another such symbol. When Ava nodded, Sara swallowed, then raised her eyebrow questioningly. “Can we remove the gauze for now? It would probably be best to wash the area.”

  
    “Sure,” Ava said, and Sara peeled back the medical tape, then removed the gauze, which she placed in the trash. “We can get you clean dressing for it later,” she said. “For the other one too, if you need it.”

  
   _The other one._ Ava’s chest tightened, and she braced herself against the sink with one arm. _Oh, god. How’s she going to react when she sees -_

  
    “Hey,” Sara said, the word laced with concern. “I’m right here,” she said. “Don’t go in your corner, okay?” Sara lifted Ava’s chin with two fingers, until their eyes met.

  
    “It’s not just - ” Ava started, then stopped. She saw the moment when Sara understood what she had been trying to say.

  
    “It’s not just those two,” Sara finished for her. “There are more.”

  
    Ava confirmed her suspicion with a short nod.

  
    “You’re worried I’ll - what? Freak out? Get upset?” Sara continued, prompting her quietly, and Ava lifted her gaze up to Sara’s. Her girlfriend grasped her hands and held them reassuringly. “Ava, you’ve seen my body. You’ve seen the scars I have. I know our experiences are different, but listen to me when I say,” she said, lifting their clasped hands between them for emphasis, “Nothing that he did to you will make you less beautiful to me.”

  
    Ava felt her mouth twitch with the hint of a smile, and Sara seized on that, pressing on. “And if you’re worried about me not being able to - ” she faltered for a second, searching for the right word - “not being able to _handle_ it, well, I’ve seen my share of battle-worn bodies, many of them people I care about. Sometimes the body is mine. Now, I can’t say that I like seeing you hurt, but - ” Sara paused, and her even tone cracked a little, despite her efforts. “I hate it,” she admitted. “Seeing you hurt and knowing you’re in pain, and not being able to heal you, it’s the worst thing, it’s hard. But I’m not going to fall apart on you,” Sara promised. “I will help you navigate this. Now,” she said, leading Ava towards the bathtub, “Let’s do this together.”

  
    Ava was down to a black tank top and pants now, and they worked the former off first. Ava lifted the hem of the shirt about halfway up her abdomen, then higher, but when it came time to lift her arms above her head to twist it the rest of the way off, she faltered, and Sara stepped in to help, taking hold of the fabric and tugging the garment up and away.

  
    Ava felt her face flush with - what? Shame? She knew that that didn’t make sense, that her injuries weren’t her fault, but still, the heat rose in her face, and her ears felt hot as her torso was exposed to the light. She was grateful when Sara didn’t pause, but merely reached out to the button fastening Ava’s pants. She glanced up at Ava quickly, and when Ava nodded, Sara helped her out of those, as well. When that was done, Sara folded them, and while she went to set them on the counter by the sink in a pile with the rest of the clothes, Ava finished undressing, letting the remaining articles fall to the floor in a little pile that she nudged off to one side with her foot.

  
    “Oh, Ava,” Sara said quietly from behind her, and Ava turned and saw two things: one, her own naked body in the mirror; and two, Sara, now presented with the unfiltered reality of the situation, taking it in.

  
    The first thing that came to Ava’s head was, _it looks as bad as it feels_. Which was to say, it looked pretty bad.

  
    Ava’s entire torso, and much of her legs, looked like a morbid watercolor art piece of blacks, blues, greens, and purples, the color at any given point depending on its stage in the healing process. A particularly nasty bruise ran up her left side, starting at her hip and extending up over her ribs and beginning to wrap around to her back. Her back itself had not escaped the same fate, either; it, too, was a mottled patchwork of bruised skin and muscle. The question for the majority of her body seemed not to be whether or not it was bruised, then, but rather a matter of how deeply. Ava suspected a cracked rib or two, and potentially some bruised vertebrae, but she couldn’t be certain. _Gideon can scan me tomorrow._

  
    The hardest thing for Ava to see in this unflinching light, though, wasn’t the glaring evidence of the beating she’d endured these last two weeks; she’d been in combat situations before, for the job, so seeing bruises was nothing new, though admittedly the scale of this was far beyond anything Ava had ever experienced. No, the hardest thing to take in - for herself, and Ava suspected for Sara as well - was the runes.

  
    The one on her chest, where the gauze had been. The one on her arm. Both of these, Sara had seen. Now, she saw the rest.

  
    One above Ava’s right knee. Another, on her left shin. And three, there were three more on her back. One was low, near the base of her spine, off-center by about three inches; another was a little bigger, towards the left near the center of her back; and the third, the last one, up high, behind the slope between her neck and right shoulder.

  
  _Oh, Ava._ That’s all Sara had said, and in that moment, Ava was so incredibly grateful for the woman before her. Ava knew her well, better - she’d venture to say - than most, and she knew that Sara, for all her excellent leadership skills and team management abilities, still sometimes struggled with the tendency to speak first, think later. That was not so, now, and Ava appreciated it. _She’s probably worked out a hundred different ways she wants to kill him,_ Ava thought. And questions - the not knowing the how behind all this, well, Ava could imagine what she’d be thinking, if the two of them were swapped, and it was Sara who had been made to look like this. _I’d be going out of my mind not knowing. All that, and she managed to keep her reaction to ‘Oh, Ava?’_

  
_I don’t deserve you, Sara Lance._

  
    After what felt like hours, though it was in all likelihood no more than a few heartbeats, it was Ava who broke the silence.

  
    “Carved.”

  
    Sara started a little, tearing her gaze from the injuries that wracked Ava’s form. “What?”

  
    “The runes. Like you said, definitely not tattoos.”

  
    “Ava, you don’t have to - ” Sara tried, but Ava kept going.

  
    “He used a good old-fashioned knife, no demonic magic involved there. That came after.”

  
    “After?” Sara echoed. She was frozen where she stood, by the sink, as if moving would topple something that neither of them knew how to reconstruct. She seemed to be waiting for Ava to stop, but Ava wasn’t done.

  
    “Once the rune was drawn, he cauterized the wound with a spell. It burned the rune in, like a brand. Then he went back over the lines with this charcoal-paste mixture. It was thick, like paint, but grainy, definitely magic-adjacent, but I’m not sure exactly how.” Pause. “The logistics of the charcoal wasn’t exactly at the forefront of my mind, at the time,” she commented softly.

  
    “Will the charcoal wash out?” Sara said, her tone matching Ava’s. Ava shrugged, then nodded.

  
    “It would fade after some time, so he’d reapply it,” she said hollowly.

  
    Sara had done an admirable job masking her reactions thus far, but for some reason, that comment broke the facade, and for an instant, her expression was a hurricane. Anger, horror, hurt, sorrow - all of that, and more that Ava couldn’t immediately identify, flashed behind her eyes, with an intensity that was striking to Ava. She’d only known Sara in the time after the woman had proclaimed herself a “reformed” assassin, but Ava knew of that part of Sara’s past, and for an instant, Ava could picture what that must have looked like. She knew that none of these negative emotions were aimed at her, that they were wholly focused on Neron for all that he’d done, but in that second, Sara looked absolutely formidable. She looked dangerous.

  
    And then it was gone, as quickly as it had come, the torrent of emotions behind that expression fading - or being pushed away, Ava couldn’t entirely tell - and being replaced with just one: care. “Let’s get you clean, and see what we can do about it, then,” she said.

  
    Sara helped Ava step into the bath, and Ava lowered herself in, letting the welcome heat of the water envelop her as she sank down. The water had been clear, but as she settled, Ava already saw swirls of dirt and something darker - the charcoal mixture perhaps - beginning to cloud it.

  
    Sara disappeared for a second, then rematerialized at her side with a large, soft sponge in one hand and a bottle of bath soap in the other. “Where do you want to start?” she asked.

  
    Ava thought for a second, and her eyes slid from Sara to the bottles of shampoo and conditioner on the side of the tub. “Actually, the hair, if we can,” she said.

  
    “If we can? Your wish is my command,” Sara said, going for the hair products. She put some shampoo in her hands as Ava ran her fingers through her hair. She didn’t get far, there were too many knots for that, but it got the job done, wetting the hair enough for Sara to apply the shampoo. Sara knelt at the side of the bathtub and encouraged Ava to lean her head back. “I’ve got this, you just relax,” Sara said, and as she started working the shampoo into Ava’s hair, gently massaging her scalp as she did so, Ava finally let herself begin to.

  
    Forty-five minutes later, the water was no longer anywhere close to clear; instead, it was entirely fogged up with lather from Ava’s now-clean hair, and soap from the sponge. The water temperature hadn’t gone down at all, and Ava wondered - somewhat absently, as Sara pressed the sponge down over the rune in the middle of her back and ran it over the skin - whether Gideon had a hand in keeping the water from cooling.

  
    Ava hugged her knees and was bent over them, baring her back to Sara, who worked the sponge over the raw runes methodically. Ava knew she was being as cautious as she could while still actually cleaning the wounds, but she couldn’t help but wince as one motion put pressure on one of the vertebrae she suspected to be bruised.

  
    “Sorry,” Sara said immediately. “I’m almost done with this one, then just one more to go.” Ava nodded, head bowed, staring at the way the ends of her hair splayed out and drifted slowly in the water. She was so tired. _Almost. You’re almost there_.

  
    There came a small splash as Sara submerged the sponge, squeezing it out, re-soaking it, then lathering it up with fresh soap. “Ready?” she asked after a few seconds.

  
    Ava closed her eyes, bracing herself. “Yeah. Go ahead.”

  
    Sara brought the sponge up to the final rune, the one behind her right shoulder, and pressed down, slowly moving the sponge across the skin. Ava inhaled quickly, unable to contain her reaction as the area immediately both stung and ached with a soreness that seemed to extend down to the bone. Right hand still holding the sponge to the area, Sara put her other hand on Ava’s left shoulder, and Ava reached her hand up to hold it.

  
    “I know it’s bad, but it’ll be over in a minute, and then it will be clean, and it can start to heal. In the meantime, when it hurts, squeeze my hand as hard as you want, okay?”

  
    “Okay,” Ava said, somewhat numbly, and with that, Sara resumed working the sponge over the rune. New lines of black colored the water as the charcoal paste began to wash away, and Ava watched it made patterns in the water. She focused on her breathing. In, then out, then repeat. Again. _Again._ She concentrated on regulating pacing, depth of breath, but it was a meager distraction at best, and when the rune stung again, Ava squeezed Sara’s hand tightly as if it was a lifeline.

  
    After a few minutes, Sara stopped moving the sponge over the skin, but instead of standing or telling Ava she was finished, she hesitated. Ava wasn’t looking at her face, but she could feel a question forming.

  
    “What is it?” she asked, lifting her head, which felt heavier than usual on account of the waterlogged hair. She glanced over her shoulder to Sara, who was looking intensely at the final rune.

  
    “This one, it’s, um…” she sighed. “It’s deeper than the others. Would you happen to know…do you any idea why?”

  
     _Any idea. Yeah, I have a few_.

  
    “That was the first one he did,” Ava told her. “The runes, they each mean something different, something related to whatever spell he was doing to me at the time.” Sara regarded her evenly; Ava knew that Sara had likely suspected this, but in all the time they’d been here, she hadn’t asked what they meant, and again, Ava was grateful to Sara for seeming to know, intrinsically, what to seek answers for, and what answers could perhaps wait until another day.

  
    This one, though. Ava understood. This one was different, and it made sense to wonder why.

  
    “The others, he’d make the marks and cauterize them, then paint on the charcoal mix, and if the spell started to fade, he’d reapply the charcoal and that seemed to rejuvenate the magic,” Ava informed her. “But this one…” she tried to concentrate on forming the words, instead of remembering the experience of what she was describing. It was a difficult line to walk. “This one he did on day one, and whenever it started to wear off, instead of just adding more charcoal mix, he'd - ” she faltered, and finished more quietly than when she’d started. “He’d re-carve it,” she said.

  
    This time it was Sara that squeezed Ava’s hand, for a long time, not painfully, but enough to convey to Ava that she heard her, that she was so sorry, that she was here to help her get through this now. Once Ava’s words had sunk in, Sara asked, slowly, “What does it mean?”

  
    Ava turned back to stare at the edge of the tub in front of her, and she heard the drip-drip-drip of the sponge being wrung out one last time, then set aside. Then, Ava felt Sara’s arms around her shoulders, Sara’s lips pressed against the crown of her head, kissing her softly, before resting her head in the crook of Ava’s neck, holding her in an embrace, not caring that the water from Ava’s body was soaking through the pajama t-shirt that Sara wore.

  
    “Awake,” Ava answered, her voice barely above a whisper.

  
    “What?”

  
    “The rune. It means ‘awake.’ He kept me awake.” The entire time, the whole two weeks, Ava had either been kept awake through the ordeal, or trapped in her personal purgatory.  There had been no escape. No respite. It was the reason she was so tired, why the exhaustion felt like it had taken root in her bones and settled there, unwelcome yet unyielding.

  
    It happened quickly, like a tendril of a spiderweb snapping under the weight of a too-heavy creature treading upon it. One moment Ava was fine - well, not fine, not nearly, but she had her breathing under control, she had worked her mind to a point of vague numbness, where she could at least allow her brain to rest. She was as calm as she could be, given the circumstances. And then, she wasn’t.

  
    A silent sob shook her shoulders, then another, then another, and when she sucked in air it made a hurt kind of sound, and her vision blurred thick with tears that fell hot into the soapy, dirty water. Sara’s hand left her shoulder, and suddenly the water around her rose collectively. It took Ava a few seconds to realize what had happened: Sara had stepped into the tub behind her.

  
    Sara lowered herself into the water behind Ava. She hadn’t taken off her pajamas, and they clung to her skin as she eased herself down. She parted her legs and put one on either side of Ava’s hunched form in a V-shape, cradling her. One arm, she snaked around Ava’s midsection - gently, gently - and the other, she ran through the woman’s hair. Ava let herself be pulled back until her head rested on Sara’s chest, and the steady rise and fall of Sara’s breathing was a rock in the tempest-tossed sea that Ava felt she was drowning in.

  
    Sara didn’t try to tell Ava to hush, or ask her any more questions. There, in the hot, muddled water of the bath, Sara simply held Ava as she cried.

  
    “I’m here,” Sara whispered as Ava’s body shook, and the water lapped at the curves of the bath. Over and over she said it, until the shaking stopped, until the breathing resembled something close to regular, until Ava finally drifted into sleep. She said it like a promise, though whether it was to herself or to the woman in her arms, she eventually couldn’t tell anymore.

  
    “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”


	5. Lightbulb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fifth chapter, prepare your hearts - Ava has a rough time in this one

Chapter 5: Lightbulb

 

_\- Then -_

  
    The cold in her hands was the first sensation Ava registered.

  
    Next, the sting in her wrists.

  
    The throb of her skull. _Where it hit the mirror._

  
    An uncomfortable tenderness in her midsection: the beginnings of bruises forming. _Getting punched will do that to you_.

  
    Ava almost groaned aloud as she woke, but managed to stop herself before she made a sound. Instead, she did her best to modulate her breathing, to keep it as close as she could to the even rhythm it had assumed during her slumber.

  
     _It’s not like the movies_ , Ava mused to herself as she got her bearings. Characters always re-entered the waking world with exaggerated animation, eyes wild, recklessly scanning their surroundings with no method of analysis, the event often followed by frantic exclamations along the lines of _Where am I? What happened?_ Instead, Ava woke gradually, and had the presence of mind to lay low for the moment. She remembered everything immediately - Neron, the fight, _the god-damn snickerdoodles._

  
     _My body won’t_ let _me forget_ , she thought as another lance of pain shot through her skull.

  
    Ava kept her eyes closed for the time being, instead focusing on checking in with her other senses. If Neron was here, the goal was to make him think she was still asleep, for as long as possible. Time Bureau protocols for captivity at enemy hands surfaced in her mind.

  
   _In the event of an abduction, maintain presence of mind at all times, when possible. Resist all efforts to impair your perception, whether with drugs or other means. Make yourself aware of your surroundings. Avoid angering the enemy or provoking violence. …A little late for that,_ Ava thought wryly, with as much humor as she could muster, given the circumstances. _Take every opportunity to learn the enemy’s behavior and motivations. Then, utilize them in the course of your intelligence gathering and further actions._

  
    Further actions. Like escape.

  
    Ava brought her attention back to her physical situation. She felt fabric on her skin. _Clothes. My clothes_. Her shirt felt off-center, probably from the fight. Her feet, however, were bare, and her toes touched a rough carpet. Clothes were good - on a basic level, it meant there was a safeguard against suffering from exposure, a concern if she were being kept outside.

  
    …Which, it seemed, she wasn’t. Her back was against a wall, knees drawn close to her chest as if by instinct. Her arms were in an awkward position, held a little up and off to the side. Restraints dug into her wrists. Metal. _Handcuffs? Manacles?_ There was a chain between them, holding them together, and also holding her to something, something that dug into her side. Ava chanced a peek, opening her eyes just barely, and letting her surroundings come into focus.

  
    A radiator. Ava was on the floor, chained to a radiator.

  
    For some reason, this mundane detail made the gravity of her situation feel amplified, and Ava shut her eyes again. _Focus. Control your breathing. It’s the one thing you have, right now, so keep it together._

  
    Eyes still closed, Ava listened, straining to detect any sound that might lend a clue to her location. For a moment, she heard nothing but the rushing of her own blood in her ears, her own heartbeat, deafening. After a few seconds, though, she managed to calm herself, at least to the point of adhering to that first Bureau protocol, maintaining presence of mind, and ambient noises began to trickle in.

  
    Wind, outside. _The walls must be thin, that’s good, that means if I’m loud, someone will probably hear me._ The gusts sounded strong - _maybe there’s a storm?_

  
    A low background white noise… _a heating system, maybe?_ Ava shivered. Wherever that was, it certainly wasn’t in her room. _Maybe a room nearby, then?_ Based on her brief glance around, she could be in a motel room. That was good, too. Motels meant people - other residents, cleaning crews, maintenance. More people meant more witnesses.

  
    Cars. Some distance away, but distinctly present. _Maybe the motel is off a highway? What highway?_ Ava realized she had no way of knowing how far Neron had taken her from her apartment. How long had she been unconscious? First chance she had, she resolved to find a window and estimate the time.

  
    A buzzing sound, relatively constant. _Lights_ , she surmised, probably from lamps in the room. She knew that the majority of the population - unlike herself - was not fluent in Morse code, but most people at least knew how to recognize an SOS if they saw it. If something happens and I can’t scream, I could use the lights to signal for help.

  
    Ava tried not to think of things that could happen to prevent her from screaming.

  
    Having gathered as much information as she could blind, and having successfully calmed herself - as much as was possible, in this situation - by creating some tiny semblance of order to her mind as she catalogued her perceptions, Ava again slowly opened her eyes.

  
    Her hands hung from their restraints on the radiator. _That’s why my fingers are so cold - I wonder how long their circulation has been restricted like this?_ She resisted the urge to shift her position, curl her hands into fists, get the blood flowing again. She’d gone this long without moving, without indicating she was awake - might as well push on a little longer, see what else she could learn.

  
    The radiator was against the back wall, which meant that Ava was facing the whole of the room. She filed away observations quickly, methodically. _I_ am _a trained agent, after all. Time to put it to good use._

  
     _Door, directly ahead. Peep-hole. Must lead outside. Window to the right of the door, blinds closed, unimpressive beige curtains drawn._ Her eyes flicked left: _wooden dresser, television on top of it. Another door, no peep-hole. Bathroom?_ The floor was carpeted, and it looked a little worse for wear, felt cheap. Beside Ava was a tiny desk, along with a wooden chair. The desk was covered in papers, but from her position, she couldn’t tell what was written on them. Her eyes caught on something - there, and then something else, there. She new how to recognize them now, the symbols, runes, like the ones Neron had etched into the doors and walls and windows of her apartment. Her chest clenched as she realized he’d done the same here.

  
     _Okay. That’s okay. I can work with this. I’ve already seen that the runes can be wiped away, so that’s just what I’ll have to do here._ It would add several valuable seconds to any escape attempt, but at least she could plan for it.

  
    Ava’s eyes flicked right and her breath hitched, adrenaline spiking.

  
    There was a bed - and it wasn’t empty.

  
    A man lay atop the covers, fully clothed, on his back, head propped up a little bit on a pillow, eyes closed, hands clasped together and resting on his chest. _Like a corpse in a casket,_ Ava’s mind supplied for her, unbidden.

  
    Despite the low vantage point, her angle of sight left no room for doubt. The man in the bed was Neron… and he appeared to be asleep.

  
    Ava wanted to sigh with relief, but she suppressed the urge, instead casting her gaze once more around the room, this time explicitly searching for something, anything to use as a weapon.

  
   _Of course, I’d have to get out of these chains first._ And Ava had no idea how to go about that, considering the keys were nowhere in her field of vision.

  
   _I have to try something. I have no idea how long this window will last._ Ava cast another nervous glance over at Neron -

  
    Her stomach felt like it dropped six stories.

  
    The demon’s eyes were open, and he was staring directly at her.

  
    As she watched, and she saw her eye contact register to him, his features slowly twisted into a grin. It was a Cheshire smile. Ava shivered again, and this time, it wasn’t from the cold.

  
    “Morning,” said Neron after a long pause, and Ava drew in a deep breath. _Here we go. Whatever this is, it starts now._

  
    Neron sat up in the bed, but instead of rising, he just readjusted the pillows behind him so he could sit more upright. Then he leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head, crossing one leg over the other, and addressed her.

  
    “What did you gather, in your nine minutes of surveillance?” he mused, and Ava eyed him warily. She was mildly taken aback, but she did her best to mask it. She shifted her arms, got some blood flowing to her hands again. It seemed that Neron had no intention of waiting for an answer, however; he simply continued on, as if he hadn’t posed a question.

  
    “You’re wondering how I knew that you were awake.” Neron hadn’t missed the surprise flit across Ava’s features. “Your breathing pattern changed. Sure, you re-regulated it to a passable imitation of sleep - pretty impressive presence of mind, nice work there, Director - ” Neron tipped an imaginary hat in her direction, then pressed on, “But nobody can control their body’s natural reaction to waking from unconsciousness. There’s always an audible shift, and I happen to be rather practiced at detecting it.”

  
    “You’re an experienced kidnapper, then?” Ava cut in, and Neron’s smile widened.

  
    “Oh, I wondered if you’d be the type to turn to dark humor in a time of crisis. Makes it more entertaining, in my opinion.” His teeth flashed. “Well see how long it lasts.”

  
    Nice job dodging my question there, Ava noted. “Do you bring… guests… here often?” she tried, glancing around the room again before returning her gaze to the demon on the bed. “It’s a little lacking in the hospitality department - ”

  
    “Hospitality isn’t the point,” Neron interrupted her, more forcefully than she’d expected, and she fell silent. His smile lessened a bit, and Ava wasn’t sure she liked what remained any better. _Malice. Mixed with - amusement?_

  
   _He’s actually_ enjoying _this_. Her stomach squirmed.

  
    “This isn’t a courtship, Director Sharpe. We’re not here so I can entice you into becoming a vessel for Tabitha.” Neron shrugged and brought his hands down, clasped them again and rested them on his torso. “I already asked - rather politely - and as I recall, you vehemently declined. Now, unless you’ve had a change of heart…” Neron raised his eyebrows, pausing.

  
     Ava stayed determinedly silent. Almost involuntarily, her wrists tugged against the restraints, and the metal scraped on the radiator.

  
    “As expected,” Neron said. “Unfortunate, for you, but as you can see,” he gestured grandly around the room, “I prepared for this.” Neron’s gaze suddenly focused on Ava, piercing, direct. “You _will_ surrender your body as a vessel,” he said, and Ava couldn’t help but feel a seed of fear settle inside her at the certainty with which he said those words.

  
    “The sooner you submit, the easier this will be for you,” Neron continued. Ava just glared at him. Her toes curled against the cheap carpet.

  
    Neron sighed, but it sounded insincere. There was no real disappointment there, because he wasn’t at all surprised. “Well,” he said, sitting up and stepping off the side of the bed so quickly that Ava flinched at the sudden movement, “I suppose we’d better get started.”

  
    Ava’s muscles tensed, bracing herself. What could she do from here? Kick at him? It would almost seem pathetic, if it wasn’t her only option, so Ava prepared herself.

  
    However, instead of rushing towards Ava, Neron calmly crossed the room to the dresser, opened a drawer, and pulled out a small pile of clothes. Very small. Just two garments. He casually tossed them in her direction, and they landed beside her. A second later, a small silver key landed on top of them. Ava looked back up at the Demon, who stood in the center of the room expectantly.

  
    “Unlock the restraints and change,” he commanded. Ava glanced between her bound wrists and the key on the floor.

  
    “How am I supposed to do that?” she asked, pulling on her chain for emphasis.

  
    “Use your toes to pick up the key,” he replied, unfazed. Ava exhaled in frustration. If he would come close, she’d have the chance - minuscule, but still present - of trying to incapacitate him while he unlocked her cuffs, maybe use the chain to choke him, then run. Instead, it seemed the demon had no intention of getting near her, at least at the moment.

  
    It took her a few tries, but Ava managed to grip the key between her toes and maneuver her leg up so her fingers could grasp it. After a few seconds of fidgeting with the key, the manacle around one wrist loosened, and she slipped herself free. She did the same with the other, then stood slowly, rubbing her wrists. The skin was red and irritated, but not bleeding, which told Ava she couldn’t have been in them for more than a few hours.

  
    Ava stood beside the radiator, back nearly against the wall, facing Neron square-on. There was about eight feet of distance between them, and behind him, about a similar distance away, was the door, the one leading outside. _Freedom._ Ava suspected, however, that not only would any attempt to fight her way past him be subdued rather quickly, what with the demon’s demonstrated superhuman strength, she wouldn’t be able to open the door right away even if she could get to it, due to the rune etched below the doorknob.

  
    “Finished deciding against an escape attempt?” Neron said flatly, crossing his arms, and Ava snapped her attention back to him. He jerked his chin towards the clothes on the floor. “Put them on.”

  
    Ava clenched her jaw and picked them up. She straightened up again, and Neron watched her examine them.     

  
    A white tank top and white underwear. Recognition hit her a second later.

  
    “These are mine,” Ava stated, and Neron confirmed it.

  
    “I took the liberty of removing them from your wardrobe before I left your apartment.”

  
    It felt like an intrusion, a step further than breaking into her home and taking her here, as if that wasn’t enough. It felt personal.

  
    “There’s hardly anything here,” Ava said.

  
    “Astute observation.”

  
    She gripped the clothes in her fist and let her arm fall to her side. “I guess you like white, then?”

  
    “It’s not about what I like. I must take every factor into account when preparing your body for Tabitha’s arrival, including your attire. Some colors interfere with magic in unexpected ways. White is neutral, and eliminates that uncertainty.” Neron spoke like he was giving a lecture to a student, without flowery language, very matter-of-fact.

  
    _V_ _ery informative, but that doesn’t change what he’s actually saying_.

  
    “I’m not wearing this.” Ava dropped the clothes to the floor. They landed on one of her feet. Neron didn’t look down.

  
    “You can keep your bra on,” Neron said, as though it were an offer to sweeten a deal. Ava shook her head, and something hardened behind his eyes. _Impatience_.

  
    “Either you take your clothes off and change into what I’ve given you,” he said, “Or I take your clothes off and you wear nothing.”

  
    Ava’s stomach did a somersault. His tone was firm, and the choice was stark. Ava had no doubt that he meant what he said, and it was this fact that led her to pick up the clothes from the floor. After a second of hesitation, she moved towards the door to her left, which she assumed was a bathroom.

  
    “No,” Neron said, and she stopped. “You change here.”

  
    Ava turned, studied him. He terrified her, sure, was stronger and faster and clearly intended to do her harm, but she hadn’t detected any overt sexual threat. _At least not yet._ Was it time to readjust those concerns?

  
    When Neron didn’t say anything else, Ava spoke up. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d appreciate a little privacy,” she said, trying to sound more authoritative than she felt.

  
    “It’s not all the same to me. Letting you out of my sight while you’re unrestrained is just asking for you to come up with an escape attempt, and honestly, I’m not in the mood. I’m in control here, Director Sharpe,” Neron said, “But believe me, I haven’t underestimated who I have here. You didn’t get to your position at the Bureau by accident. You’re highly trained, highly skilled, excellent at situational analysis, effective at improvisation.” He ticked each comment off his fingers like bullet points on a list. “In short,” Neron said, closing his fist and dropping it to his side, looking her in the eyes, “You’re dangerous, and I’m not taking any chances. Now, I’m not going to ask again. Change. Fold your current attire and place it on the bed.”

  
    Ava was out of options, and out of time. _Might as well get it over with._ Gritting her teeth, she didn’t waste any more time. Layer by layer, she undressed, folding her blazer and laying it on the bed, followed by her black shirt. She slipped on the white tank top, then unbuttoned her black pants, only hesitating another second before stepping out of those as well. On the last item, though, she froze.

  
    “You’re worried about sexual assault,” Neron said, and Ava spun back to him. He hadn’t moved from his stance in the center of the room. Her eyes narrowed, and Neron continued. “It would be time consuming, and utterly unproductive towards the task at hand, preparing you to be a vessel for Tabitha. Trust me, Director, you will have a lot to be afraid of in the coming days, and we will certainly get to know each other much more closely - just not in that particular way, so if that’s the cause of your hesitation, please shelve the concern and continue. I’m rather tired of how this has become so drawn out.”

  
    There was some relief in what he said, but his words also did nothing to assuage Ava’s other apprehensions regarding what was in store for her. _The coming days?_ Ava realized she had no idea how long this ‘process’ was supposed to take. _How long can I hold out? And against what?_ Even that, she wasn’t prepared for. She had no idea what was coming, and that was just as terrifying as any torture she could be presented with, if not more so.

  
    Ava swallowed and finished changing quickly, tugging down her underwear and stepping into the white, shorts-like, boy-cut ones he’d taken from her drawer at home. When she was done, she faced him, arms automatically crossing in front of her, an instinctive attempt to put some kind of barrier between herself and the threat. Her hands splayed over her upper arms as goosebumps rose on her flesh. It really was cold in here. Despite herself, she felt vulnerable, dressed like this, and she hated it, hated that it had this effect on her. Neron nodded in approval when she was done.

  
    “Right then,” he said, like they were in a business meeting and it was time to move on to another proposal. “The chair there. Put it in the center of the room, right here.” He gestured towards the wooden chair in the corner, then indicated the spot where he stood, stepping away and several feet back.

  
   _I don’t like where this is going_ , Ava thought, but she saw no other options, no moments of weakness that she might exploit to slip through his defenses and escape, so she obeyed. The chair was heavier than she expected, more sturdy, and it made a finite-sounding thud as she set it in the center of a square green rug laid in the center of the room overtop the layer of carpet that covered the rest of the floor.

  
    “Excellent,” Neron said with a clap, and Ava flinched at the loud crack of sound. She knew what was coming, but still cringed inside when she heard it.

  
    “Now sit in the chair, and place your arm on the armrests.”

  
     _Like hell._

  
    It wasn’t a plan, it wasn’t much more than a wild impulse, but Ava poured every bit of energy she had into it. She launched herself not towards the door, not towards Neron, but towards the back of the room. Vaulting over the bed, she dove for a lamp on the night table. She gripped its base with one hand and ripped off the lampshade with the other, tearing the cord away from the wall. She swung the apparatus - lightbulb-end first - towards the back window beside the radiator.

  
    Though the blinds were drawn, an ordinary window would have shuddered with the ferocity of the assault. Reinforced as it was by magic, the swing had no effect on the glass - but then, Ava hadn’t really expected any different. It wasn’t the window’s glass she was targeting.

  
    The lightbulb shattered, and Ava closed her eyes briefly as the shards flew in all directions. Her cheek stung as one grazed her, but it barely registered, such was the overwhelming power of her adrenaline. The room was a little darker now, the only light coming from lamps on the other side of the room. Feet firmly planted on the ground, she spun as fast as she could and again swung the lamp at the imposing form that was nearly upon her.

  
    A blunt object might not have even slowed him down; Ava wasn’t entirely sure as to the limits or extents of Neron’s supernatural physicality. The jagged edges of the light bulb that remained on the end of her makeshift weapon, however, did give him reason to pause.

  
   _Slam_. Her instincts and aim were good, and Ava was rewarded for her efforts by a grunt from Neron as his trajectory shifted and he careened past her, shoulder slamming against the window, making the blinds rattle. _Slash_. She swung again, wielding the lamp like a sword, and the glass shards slashed his back, ripped through the fabric of his shirt. Neron arched his back, and red bloomed where his shirt had torn.

  
     _He bleeds like a human. Maybe he can die like one_.

  
    Neron twisted to face her and Ava stabbed forward again, and this time she caught him by his ribs as his arm lifted. Neron yelled in pain and she took advantage of it, adjusting her grip on the lamp and taking up its dangling cord in her left hand. Ava leapt one foot onto the bed and used it as a springboard to launch herself at the demon while he was distracted.

  
    She landed on his back, and she quickly encircled his neck with the cord, wrapping it two, three times around, then twisting the free end around the spot where it joined the wooden body of the lamp. Neron was stumbling, grasping at his neck, and Ava - about two inches taller than him, even barefoot - regained her footing. She wrenched the lamp to the side, turning it counterclockwise, letting the physics of the motion tighten the cord around Neron’s neck faster and with more force than she would ever be able to muster on her own.

  
   _Twist._ His fingers clawed at the cord, but they couldn’t gain traction. His body lurched, and she stepped with him, not letting him get away.

  
     _Twist._ The motions seemed more frantic now, his wheezing higher pitched, more desperate. _I have to be getting close. Come on, a little more…_

  
    Neron stumbled back and Ava’s hip slammed into the dresser, sending a stabbing pain through her side. They’d crossed the room in the frenzy, and the television on top of the dresser swayed in its stand.

  
    “Come _on_ , you son of a bitch - ” Ava grunted, feeling her muscles start to strain with her efforts. _Arms, don’t you dare fail me now,_ Ava commanded herself, willing her body to push through this. There was so much at stake. _Everything is at stake._ Neron’s body bucked, and she slammed into the dresser again.

  
    Ava could feel him losing strength, feel his scrambles to free himself from the cord grow more feeble, feel the attempts to breathe continue to fail, and his body start to feel the toll. She was winning - until, quite suddenly, she wasn’t.

  
    In a coordinated motion, Neron both doubled over and shot his hand up and back. He entangled his fingers in her hair, taking hold by the roots, and pulled. Ava flipped over his shoulder, pain shooting through her skull. She kicked out and heard a crash as the television fell to the floor and the screen shattered.

  
    She landed on her back, wind knocked out of her, and didn’t have a chance to get her bearings before a crushing blow slammed into her side and her body folded in on itself, curling away from the attack. _Slam,_ another impact, this one to her back, her spine, and she gasped at the pain. He was _kicking_ her, rearing his boot away from her writhing body, then driving it forward again. _Ribs. Stomach. Legs._ She heard a sickening crunching noise, accompanied by what felt like a dozen wasps stinging her back. Glass from the broken television, she registered dimly through the haze. It cut into her as she rolled on the floor, trying to get herself away, get herself to anywhere but here.

  
    Ava cried out as he gripped her hair again, yanking her up off the ground, only to grab her shoulder and slam her back down. The impact made stars swim across her vision, and her stomach heaved, but nothing came up. A punch came out of nowhere and her head slammed to the side. She tasted blood. Another kick landed to her abdomen, and a strangled sob escaped her throat.

  
    Suddenly, Ava left the ground: she was being lifted, picked up like she weighed nothing. She was thrown into the wooden chair, which Neron dragged from where it had apparently fallen in the chaos and re-set in the center of the room. Ava continued to struggle, thrashing about, kicking, punching, clawing. Her nails raked along the side of his face, down his neck, and he hissed in pain and hit her again. Her head snapped to the right and she felt a throbbing by her eye. _That’s going to swell._

  
    Neron had grabbed a rope from under the bed and was now using it to secure her to the chair. He started with her wrists, and try as she might, she could not twist away from him. He didn’t speak as he worked, just pulled the ropes tight, the friction tearing at her skin. She kicked out and made contact directly with his injured side, the one she’d cut with the lamp, and he grunted, then proceeded to bind her ankles to the chair legs, knees spread apart as he secured first one leg, then the other. Then he stood and wrapped the rope around her abdomen, forcing her posture upright as he secured her to the back of the chair.

  
    Ava felt dizzy, every one of her new injuries screaming out for her attention, and when she inhaled sharply, the breath was ragged with exhaustion and hurt. Neron stood behind her, and she heard him speak a few sentences in a tongue she did not recognize, but whose words ground against her ears and made her bones rattle. When he finished speaking, Ava realized that the ropes had seemingly been locked in place; no matter now hard she pulled, or how much she struggled, they wouldn’t budge. She was effectively immobilized.

  
    There was a distant ringing in Ava’s ears, and when she blinked, the world tilted on its side before righting itself again. Neron stepped to the side of the chair and grabbed her face in his hand, lifting it up, forcing her to look at him.

  
    His breathing was as ragged as hers; there was a small cut over his left eye, a gash on his arm, another on his side. Despite the dire situation, Ava felt a dash of pride at the damage she’d managed to cause.

  
    “I hope,” Neron said between heavy breaths, “That you got it all out of your system, because I will not indulge any more of this behavior moving forward.”

      
    The words, the weird formal cadence to them, chilled Ava to the core. _Indulge? He let me do this, he let this happen?_

  
    Neron let go of her face, but she didn’t dare look away from him. As she watched, he crossed the room in front of her and bent to pick something up off the floor. It was her shirt, the one she’d folded and put on the bed; it must have fallen. He didn’t break eye contact with her as he snatched it up and used it to wipe away the blood and sweat dripping from his brow, then clean his wounded arm, and neck where she’d scratched him. Then he crumpled the fabric into a ball and threw it down.

  
    “I’m actually a bit impressed,” he said when he was done. His chest rose and fell at a more regular rate, now, as some of the adrenaline faded. “I expected resistance, I thought I was ready for it, but you - ” He shook his head. “You had me going there, for a minute. Kudos,” he said without a trace of humor in his voice. “Not many can claim such success.”

  
   _Success._ Ava would have laughed at the absurdity of it, if the action of laughter didn’t carry with it the promise of intense pain. She was sitting, now, with no way to escape the injuries she had just sustained. There was no part of her body that didn’t ache, sting, burn, throb. A wave of dizziness swept over her, and her vision blurred for a moment before coming back into focus.

  
    When it did, Neron was kneeling with his back towards her, bent over something he’d pulled out from under the bed. A suitcase, open. Ava braced herself as he rummaged through its contents. What was it going to be? A blowtorch? A butcher knife? A cattle prod? She wished her mind would stop spiraling down this guessing game, but she couldn’t help it, and new potential horrors rose unbidden to the forefront of her mind.

  
    She couldn’t help it. She was scared.

  
   _Think of something else. Anything else_.

  
_So that’s the point I’m at_ , Ava noted absently. _So much for adhering to Bureau protocols. Avoid angering the enemy or provoking violence - that sure worked out well._

  
  _Sara._ She pictured the woman, the warrior, crashing through the door, throwing a knife with an assassin’s accuracy at Neron’s heart, then ripping off the ropes that bound her and spiriting her to safety. It was a fantasy, wishful thinking, but Ava clung to it. _She’ll come for me. Sara will come._

  
    “She’s not going to find you, sweetheart,” said Neron, and Ava’s consciousness crashed back to the present, and she realized she’d uttered Sara’s name aloud.

  
    “You don’t know her,” said Ava, her voice sounding hoarse to her ears. _She’ll come._

  
    “I know enough. Last time you were together, you had quite the fight. Maybe she’s angry with you, maybe she thinks you need space, maybe it’s some of both,” Neron said, rising from where he knelt and turning to face her, “But either way, Sara Lance is not coming to your rescue.”

  
    Whatever hope Ava had allowed to blossom inside her withered as his words sunk in. He’s right, she thought, an overwhelming wave of helplessness threatening to drown her. _She’s angry, we were both angry, and now she’s gone, she doesn’t know, she has no way of knowing -_

  
    Neron raised his arm from his side, and Ava focused on what he held, what he had taken from the suitcase.

  
    It wasn’t a weapon.

  
    It was the snickerdoodles. _The fucking snickerdoodles._

  
    “I brought these along as a reminder,” Neron said. “Of how you left things with Sara, of how nobody is coming for you. How you’re alone.” Each statement echoed in her mind. _Don’t let it get to you. The Legends will come looking, the Bureau will notice I’m gone -_

  
    Except, she was on a two-week leave of absence, per Hank’s orders.

  
    Neron seemed to sense when it hit her, when the full, suffocating weight of her predicament slammed down. He nodded, more to himself than to her, and pulled something else out of the suitcase, setting the tupperware of snickerdoodles aside on the bed.

  
    This time he emerged with the knife she had been expecting, a wicked-looking blade with runes that appeared to move, or at least quiver slightly, engraved on the handle. He crossed the room, and Ava watched him as long as she could, until he passed beside her, and she heard him kneel behind the chair. A hand touched her right shoulder and she flinched. He pushed the strap of the tank top off her shoulder and jerked the fabric back, exposing the skin at the slope of her neck, behind her right shoulder. Even this minor movement stung, probably from the accumulation of minor scrapes and piercings of skin on account of the glass shards.  
    Tears stung Ava’s eyes; she tried to blink them away, but more rose in their place, spilling over and running slowly down her cheeks. She drew a breath in quickly; the exhale was slow and shaky. _Don’t hyperventilate. Keep it together_. She felt pressure on the back of her shoulder, something sharp pressing against her skin, and she clenched her fists.

  
    “Will you willingly offer your body as a vessel?” Neron asked quietly, his voice low and close, directly into her ear. Ava swallowed.

  
   _I can get through this_.

  
    She started to shake her head, not trusting herself to speak, and he began before she’d moved more than an inch, knife digging into flesh, carving into her, the pain searing and blinding and immediate and continuous. She wanted to pass out, felt the temporary bliss of unconsciousness dancing at the edge of her vision and she called to it, grasped at it as he shifted positions and the burning ceased, only to start anew a heartbeat later. Her knuckles where white as she gripped the armrests, every muscle in her body straining, straining through the pain, but there was no escape, and why couldn’t she pass out? She was dizzy, head spinning, she felt like she was going to be sick, and still, still unconsciousness didn’t come, and she _didn’t understand_ why oblivion wasn’t saving her from this -

  
    A heartbeat could have passed, or maybe an eternity, a minute, a year - she didn’t know, she didn’t care - but at some point, Ava Sharpe heard a horrifying sound, like an animal dying, like a train screeching for traction on iced-over tracks, and she realized that she had begun to scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all who have taken the time to read, and to everyone who's left comments - I really appreciate the feedback, and I'm flattered by all the kind words that have been written :) I currently have one more chapter done, which will be posted this time tomorrow, but after that, I'm really sorry, but there's going to be a longer wait between updates. I'll write when I can (so stay tuned, if you want to see what happens next!) but I need to buckle down and focus on studying for finals (I'm in college). 
> 
> Thank you again for engaging with this story! <3


	6. Breathe First

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter six - get ready for some Sara angst, and also laying some groundwork for Zarlie

Chapter 6: Breathe First

  
_\- Now -_

  
    “Gideon, what time is it?” Sara whispered as she clicked the door to her cabin on the Waverider shut as quietly as she could. Gideon picked up on her attempt at discretion and matched it, responding at low volume.

  
    “It is 3:03 in the morning, Captain,” the AI answered, and Sara rubbed her eyes wearily. She was exhausted, but at this rate, she could tell she wasn’t going to get any sleep anytime soon.

  
    When Ava had fallen asleep in the bath, Sara had held her for a while, running her fingers through the woman’s hair, taking comfort in the heat of their bodies, feeling the physical weight of Ava’s presence like a missing piece of her that had been gone, and was now returned. Sara had drained the bath, dried Ava off, and dressed her in the softest pajamas she could find. She’d slipped the garments on carefully, so carefully, over the bruised and scarred skin. Then she’d laid Ava in bed and stayed with her, held her as she slept. It seemed like a deep sleep, and Sara was glad; rest, real rest, was something Ava desperately needed.

  
    She looked different, asleep. Her features smoothed, muscles no longer knotted in pain, brow no longer furrowed in worry. Sara would’ve given anything, anything and everything, to take away all the reasons Ava had to feel pain and worry in wakefulness. To protect her from it all.

  
   _I couldn’t protect her._

  
    Sara had tried to sleep beside her, but hours passed agonizingly slowly, and every time she closed her eyes, her mind wouldn’t stop tormenting her with disjointed images.

  
     _Ava, kneeling on the motel room rug, cold, hurt._

  
_Ava, looking smaller than ever before on the bathroom floor, barely able to muster the strength to ask for help undressing._

  
_Ava, flinching under the tender touch of the sponge as Sara did her best to clean the fresh, angry scars that marred her body._

  
    No, Sara wasn’t getting any sleep tonight. So, she’d gingerly extricated herself from the bed, tucking the covers around Ava’s sleeping form, confident that her girlfriend would remain unconscious for another ten hours at least, and quietly slipped out of the room.

  
    Her muscles itched for the kind of physical exertion that could make her forget everything else, force her to focus on nothing but power and reflexes. Normally, the training room was her go-to in times of stress, but tonight, Sara found herself wandering in a different direction.

  
    Navigating the timeship in the lights of the hallway so soon after leaving her pitch-black quarters gave Sara’s walk a surreal feeling, like she existed in an in-between space in the midst of reality and a less tangible plane. _Water_. Maybe a little hydration would clear her head. Sara meandered to the kitchen, poured herself a glass of water, then went to the bridge.

  
    The bridge was empty, a rare occurrence for the ship; it seemed that there was always somebody milling about, be it Constantine in the library, Ray in the lab, Mick writing in some corner, Zari and Charlie squabbling about something in the halls. Sara stood at the helm and let the seconds drag on, until the stillness began to feel like another weight on her already-weary shoulders, and she sighed. She crossed the bridge, bare feet silent on the cold floor, and went into the library. Setting the water on the table, Sara ran her fingers lightly over the bound volumes that populated the bookshelves until she found what she was looking for.

  
    Sara sank into one of the armchairs, setting a stack of books on a small table beside her, and snatched a pen and piece of blank paper from a mess of pages that littered the desk - debris from one of Mick’s abandoned drafts, no doubt. She started out flipping through the first book in her stack, but quickly shut it again with a snap that felt too loud in the hush of the room. Instead, she took up the pen and paper, drawing her knees up to her chest, and leaning on them as she started to draw. She sketched lightly at first, practicing the rigidity of the lines, the arcs of the curves. Her jaw clenched in concentration, and time seemed to slip away.

  
    “If you’re looking for something to help you sleep, love, I’d advise searching elsewhere, because that certainly isn’t going to help you,” came a low voice after a long period of silence, punctuating the hush that had fallen, and Sara’s senses went on high alert. She turned in the chair, her curled-up position now resembling something more like a panther’s crouch before a kill, pen gripped in her hand like a weapon.

  
    John Constantine leaned one shoulder against the entrance to the study and raised his eyebrows at her reaction, and Sara relaxed with a huff, settling back into the chair and loosening her death-grip on the pen.

  
    “Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to sneak up on an assassin?” Sara asked. It came out a little harsher than she’d intended, but Constantine just shrugged and looked at her pointedly.

  
    “Seems to me I’m not the only one sneaking,” he said. “It’s been a long day, and to be honest, part of me expected to never see you away from Miss Sharpe’s side again.”

  
    She shook her head, pushing away a twinge in her heart, sighing again. “I couldn’t sleep.” John didn’t move from the entranceway, and Sara cocked her head to the side. “Go back to bed, John.”

  
    “I would, but you see,” John replied, eyeing the paper in Sara’s hand, “As a demon hunter, I find it mildly difficult to get quality shut-eye when somebody is awake at three o’clock in the bloody morning, drawing demonic runes in the library.”

  
    Sara’s eyes widened, and she glanced back at her paper. Once blank, it was now covered in small black runes, shapes that she couldn’t get out of her mind, no matter how hard she tried. Every time she closed her eyes, they were there. Just like they were branded into Ava. Sara’s stomach tightened, and she swallowed.

  
    “I didn’t - ” she started, but Constantine saw her worry and shook his head.

  
    “No spells have been cast here tonight - you have no training in magic, so you could draw those all day long without tapping into that force. Those runes, though,” he said, stepping into the library and walking around beside the chair, taking the paper from her hands and examining it closely, “They carry power on their own, whether or not the person drawing them knows how to wield it.” He fell silent, eyes flicking quickly from one rune to another, and Sara shifted in her chair. Finally Constantine stopped, and he turned first to her, then to the stack of books on the table beside her, skimming the titles on the spines.

  
    “If you were looking for these runes in those pages, I can tell you now that those books won’t hold the answers,” Constantine said finally, handing the paper back to Sara. “That’s dark magic.”

  
    “What, you mean to tell me that you, a demonologist, don’t have any books on dark magic?” Sara retorted, and Constantine rolled his eyes, then bent to a lower row of books on a shelf across the room. He spun on on his heel and presented it to her with a flourish. Sara took it and squinted at the title.

  
    “A Beginner’s Guide to Farm-Fresh Vegan Home-Cooking?” Sara read aloud incredulously, and Constantine pulled a up a chair across from her and slumped into it, his expression half-grin, half-grimace.

  
    “Gary’s been showing interest in studying the dark arts lately,” he said in such a tired-professor tone that Sara snorted in amusement. She flipped open the book, and instead of being greeted with photographs of platters peppered with too-bright colors, she was met with pages upon pages of small black symbols, with even smaller, tightly-scrawled writing beside them. “I didn’t want him to stumble on it accidentally and get in over his head,” Constantine continued as she flipped through the book.

  
    “So you hid it in - ” Sara squinted across the room at the shelf Constantine had taken the volume from. “The cooking section? Why do we even have a cooking section? Gideon takes care of everything we need in that department.”

  
    “Mick’s becoming quite the baker,” Constantine commented, and this time Sara couldn’t keep in a quick laugh.

  
    “Mick?”

  
    Constantine nodded seriously. “His blueberry muffins are really something. Banana bread recipe is coming along, too.”

  
    Sara waited for Constantine to break, but he regarded her evenly, and she shook her head in disbelief.

  
    “How did I not know about this?” she speculated aloud. An image materialized in her mind, of Mick in an apron and oven mitt, his hulking form bent to pull something out of the oven, and she grinned. _First we get Mick the romance writer, now Mick the baker?_ Sara was torn between wanting to laugh hysterically, and something else - a pang of guilt. _Maybe I’m not as good a Captain as I thought I was, if I’m this clueless about what one of my team is up to in his free time_.

  
    “When was the last time you set foot in the kitchen for more than the time it took to grab leftovers from the fridge?” Constantine pointed out, and Sara shrugged. _That’s fair._ She resolved to make a conscious effort, moving forward, to spend a little more time with the members of her team in between missions, get to know them on a more personal level. _I owe them that_.

  
    “But the runes,” Constantine said, pulling the conversation back to the paper in Sara’s hand. He looked at her, expression unreadable. “Ava?” he asked.

  
    Sara opened her mouth, then closed it. She didn’t want to betray Ava’s trust, but she had been unprepared for the inquiry, and now, she couldn’t deny a direct question.

  
    “I was there too, love, when we found her,” Constantine reminded her gently, and Sara pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes closed, remembering. She nodded, and Constantine continued. “But I only saw three in the rush of finding her and getting her back to the Waverider.”

  
    Sara paused before responding, and for once, Constantine didn’t interrupt. “There are more,” she confirmed softly. She flushed, and tears welled in her eyes unexpectedly. She blinked them away and cleared her throat. Constantine was regarding her with as empathetic an expression as she’d ever seen him have, and he dragged his chair forward until he was sitting directly in front of her, so their knees were almost touching. He held out his hand.

  
    “May I?” he asked, gesturing towards the paper, and again, Sara handed it over. He hunched over it, and she followed suit as he brought his finger to the symbols she’d drawn from memory.

  
    “She said he did this one first,” she said, pointing to the first rune she’d sketched, over and over across the top of the page until she got the angles of the lines right. “Awake,” she whispered hoarsely. In her mind’s eye, she saw Ava’s scarred back bent away from her, shaking with sobs in the bathtub, and her heart nearly broke all over again. Constantine hesitated, then slid his finger to the next rune down on the page.

  
    “Stay,” he said. Sara’s stomach did a flip. _Stay. Like she’s a dog._ Her blood boiled, and Constantine pointed at the next rune.

  
    “Blind.” He moved down the page. “Hush.” He frowned at the next one. “This one means ‘Quiet,’ but it’s not like the last one. ‘Hush’ is a command, this one is more like - like taking sound away.”

  
    “Sensory deprivation,” Sara stated, feeling hollow, and Constantine nodded grimly, having apparently arrived at the same conclusion.

  
    “The last two?” Sara asked. If he stopped now, she wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to ask him to keep going.

  
    “This one - ” Constantine puzzled over it for a minute. “It’s a hybrid rune. The base, here,” he said, tracing a jagged diagonal line that jutted up sharply at an angle, “It means ‘Amplify,’ but combined with these,” he highlighted several extraneous curves and slashing lines, “They’re elements of symbols representing other senses. Vision, speech, hearing… touch. It’s like the direct opposite of the others. They were meant to suppress the senses. This one seems designed to flood them.”

  
   _Oh, Ava._

  
    A wayward tear slipped down Sara’s cheek, and she wiped it away quickly. She was an expert at suppressing her emotions, and if that was impossible, at least hiding them effectively; the League had drilled it into her, so much so that one of Sara’s biggest challenges with the Legends, which she still struggled with at times, was letting the facade crack, opening up. Now, though, she grasped at that training, used it as a shield, wore it like armor. She felt a hurricane of emotions welling inside her and she knew that if she let them overtake her in the wave that they threatened to become, she’d drown in it, so instead, she pushed it down. _Just like I was taught to do_. She was grateful, suddenly, for this ability. It didn’t mean she would ignore the mess of feelings brought on by this new information, all that it signified, all the developments of the last several hours; it did mean, however, that she would deal with all of it gradually, piece-meal, one sour bite at a time.

  
    The wave would still come, but this way, Sara knew, she could keep her head above water.

  
  _What does that say about me, that I have a tried-and-true system of processing trauma?_

  
    “And the last one?” Sara asked, aware that she had been silent too long, appreciative of Constantine for letting her wrestle with everything going on in her head.

  
    “Another command. It means ‘Go.’”

  
_Go? Go where?_ It certainly didn’t fit with the theme. The rest of the runes seemed designed for one purpose: to keep Ava awake and still throughout her ordeal. _But if she was still, how could she -_

  
    “To purgatory,” Sara said aloud as it dawned on her. Constantine nodded.

  
    “If done after the rune for ‘Stay,’ in conjunction with the mental state induced by different combinations of the others, then yes, this rune could have sent her there.”

  
    Sara stood up quickly, walking around behind her chair, then pacing the library, hands clasped behind her head, staring at the ceiling.

  
    “When she wakes up, after breakfast, first thing she’s doing is letting Gideon heal her,” Sara said. “I wanted it to happen tonight, I tried to convince her to do it as soon as we got out of purgatory, but she said she was tired, so - ” Sara exhaled slowly, rubbing her temples. “Gideon will get rid of the bruises and cuts and all the rest, and she can be free of these fucking runes once and for all.”

  
    Constantine stood now, too, but as she paced, he stood still, hands in his pockets, looking at her with - _is that pity?_

  
    “I’m afraid that’s not how it works, love,” he said, and Sara whirled to face him. “Runes like this, they’re pure dark magic, and no technology, no matter how advanced, can purge them from a living person.” Constantine’s expression changed, and Sara saw anger, fury, twist his features. “There’s a reason that it’s forbidden to use binding runes on a human body,” he growled. “It’s a violation of body autonomy, of nature. Nobody is supposed to be able to wield that kind of power over someone else’s physical form. It’s _wrong_ ,” he said, the last word coming out in a snarl. He turned away from her quickly; his shoulders rose and fell, and when he faced her again, he was a little calmer, but staring at him now, Sara knew that the dark weight of all this - it was getting to him, too.

  
    “There’s got to be _something_ we can do,” Sara said, but Constantine shook his head wearily.

  
    “There isn’t.”

  
    “So, what, she’ll be stuck with these scars forever?” Sara heard her voice rising in volume, but she didn’t care, there was a humming in her veins and fire in her eyes. She wanted to hit something.

  
    “Maybe,” Constantine admitted. “There is a chance they’ll fade with time, but I’m afraid there’s no way to know how long they’ll linger, or if they’ll ever truly be completely gone.”

  
    “That’s not good enough, John,” Sara said, again louder than before, and John threw up his hands in defeat.

  
    “Sara - ”

  
    “No, you don’t understand, there has to be a way, there needs to be a way,” and Sara was yelling now, and there it was again, that god-damn look of pity in his eyes, _I don’t want your pity, I want you to_ help _me -_

  
    “There isn’t a way, Sara,” came a soft voice in the entranceway to the library, and both Sara and Constantine turned, Sara so fast that her hair fell in her face. She was out of breath, jumpy, restless, and it took her a moment to register who was standing in the doorway, for the words to sink in.

  
    Nora Darhk stood with her arms folded, shifting her weight from foot to foot.

  
    “What?” Sara said, lungs deflating, re-grounding herself, and Nora stopped shifting.

  
    “There’s nothing you can do,” she said. She stepped into the library and halted a few feet in front of Sara, She hesitated for a moment, then took the hem of her shirt and lifted, turning and lifting her arm to expose the area near her side, at the top of her left ribcage.

  
    “The Order spent years preparing me to be a vessel for Mallus, and when it was time and I had made the decision to do it, to save my father, they did this.”

  
    Sara couldn’t help but stare at the scar, some of the rune a faded red, other lines reduced to white scar tissue. It was bigger than any of Ava’s runes, about the height of Sara’s hand. She glanced back up at Nora, who held her eye contact for a heartbeat before dropping the fabric and letting her shirt fall back into place.

  
    “None of Ava’s runes look like that,” Sara said, and Nora nodded.

  
    “If a demon wants to inhabit a human vessel in the living world, they can only enter a willing host,” Nora said. “This rune means ‘ready.’ It’s the last step to prepare the body, before the demon arrives, and can only be drawn once permission is given.”

  
    “But you were never - ” Constantine started, and Nora cut him off.

  
    “Possessed?” Nora finished for him. “No. My father took my place. Probably the one good thing he ever did in his life.”

  
    Her statement hung in the air, and Sara addressed the two of them. “What does it mean, that that rune wasn’t drawn on Ava?” _Carved on Ava. Burned into her._

  
    It was Nora who responded, softly. “It means she never gave permission,” she said. “She never gave in.”

  
_She never gave in._

  
_Everything he put her through, for all that_ time… _and she never gave in._

  
    A knot rose in Sara’s throat, and her mind filled with the other information Nora had shared: that even after all this time, the rune hadn’t completely healed, and remained a visible mark on her body, a reminder of that part of her past. Sara felt nauseous.

  
     _“No,”_ Sara whispered. “No, there has to be something you haven’t tried, or some new method we could figure out. Ava is _not_ going to be reminded of what happened to her every time she looks in a mirror.”

  
    “Like you are, you mean?” said Constantine, and Sara whipped around to face him.

  
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  
    “Your scars, from your time on Lian Yu, and your training with the League of Assassins. Now, I’m no expert, but I know they’re not exactly the forgiving type. They put you through hell. Shit, love, you’ve _been_ to hell, and back again.” Sara took a step towards Constantine, eyes narrowed, but he held his ground. “You see your history every time you look in a mirror, too.”

  
    “It’s not the same,” Sara said, volume rising again, stepping closer. Constantine was taller than her, larger, but a muscle tensed in his neck as she advanced.

  
    “I know it’s not, but Ava has to face her own demons, Sara. You can be there for her and help her through it, but you need to trust that she can handle this and overcome it. She already made it through the worst of it. She can work through this, too.”

  
    Any other day, Sara would have been impressed with, and even grateful for, the level of emotional maturity demonstrated by Constantine at this moment, the man who typically drank his way through the idle hours and swore his way through the rest. Now, however, Sara bit back with venom.

  
    “You think I don’t trust her? She’s the strongest person I know!”

  
    “Then why are you so caught up on this?” Constantine yelled back, matching her volume.

  
    “Because it’s my fault!”

  
    Her words echoed through the library and the bridge beyond it, and Sara would have winced, except the pain of believing what she said hurt more than hearing it spoken aloud ever could.

  
    “Sara,” said Nora from behind her. Sara felt a gentle hand on her shoulder and shrugged it off reflexively, then wished she hadn’t. She stood in the middle of the library, hands curled into fists at her sides, staring at the floor.

  
    “I should have known,” she said hoarsely. “I should have checked on her sooner, I should have _realized_ something was wrong - ”

  
    “There was no way you could have known,” said Nora, but Sara shook her head vehemently.

  
    “But I should have, though. I should have realized she was in pain. She was gone two weeks, and he hurt her, and I couldn’t protect her. I couldn’t save her.”

  
    “You _did_ save her, love,” said Constantine. “We went to that motel room, and you went to purgatory for her.”

  
    “But I should’ve - ”

  
    “What? Felt something? Magically sensed that something was amiss?” Constantine put his hands on her shoulders, and though her instincts were to throw them off, Sara instead held onto his arms, head hung low. “You’re punishing yourself for not doing something that would have been impossible to do. That’s human. You’re as human as they come, Sara, and what you did was far beyond what most other people would have been able to do for her.”

  
    Sara felt a tremor in her hands, and she dropped them quickly from Constantine’s arms, stepping back so fast, it was almost a stumble. She backed out of the library, blinking away the tears that had welled in her eyes. She swallowed; it felt like there was something sharp in her throat that she had to choke down.

  
    “I need to move. Train. I need a distraction,” Sara said, walking backwards, then turning towards the hall.

  
    “Sara - ” said Nora, and Sara turned, but didn’t stop backing away.

  
    “Thank you, both of you,” she said. The words were genuine. She appreciated what they’d said, how they tried to help her tonight. Part of her knew that Constantine was right, but it wasn’t sinking in. She hoped she sounded as sincere as she felt, but she didn’t wait around to see if the words came out right. Instead, she half-walked, half-ran to the training room.

 

     When she got there, her heart was racing, fingers itching to hit something, muscles aching to be pushed until they couldn’t push anymore. She yearned for the point when her lungs would scream for air, where her muscles would shake at something so mundane as pushing herself up off the ground. It brought everything back to the basics. _If you can’t breathe, your priorities sort themselves out real quick_. Breathe first, think later. _Breathe first, hurt later._

  
  _Breathe first._

  
    Sara punched the code to open the door, entered with all the force of a wayward tornado, and was all the way at the salmon ladder halfway across the room when she realized she wasn’t alone.

  
    Zari was standing in the center of one of the exercise mats across the room, breathing heavily, bo-staff in one hand. She wore a set of headphones, but as Sara stared at her, she reached up and pulled them down to rest around her neck. Something seemed off about them, and it took Sara a second to get out of her own head enough to form words.

  
    It probably would have made more sense to ask something along the lines of _Why are you training at four in the morning_ , but Sara at least had the presence of mind to realize how hypocritical that would be. Instead, what came out was, “Aren’t those Charlie’s headphones?”

  
    “I, um - ” Zari set the bo-staff down and took the headphones off quickly, setting them to the side. “She made this playlist that she said would be good for training, and she said it would sound better with her headphones, something about sound quality, so…” Zari was talking quickly, but she trailed off, looking Sara up and down.

  
    “You look terrible,” she said.

  
    “Thanks.”

  
    “No, I just mean - ” Zari sighed. “Let me start over. You must have a lot on your mind, if you’re coming here at this hour. I mean, that makes sense, you just got out of purgatory, and what Ava’s been through, I’m sure it must be hard dealing with that, and - ”

  
    “What brings _you_ here at four in the morning?” Sara interrupted, cutting off Zari’s rambling, and Zari looked relieved that she had. She crossed her arms and rolled up onto her toes, then back on her heels.

  
    “I guess I have a busy mind, too. Nothing like the kind of things you’re dealing with,” she said quickly, “But just a few things to… think about, and I didn’t really feel like thinking about them anymore, so - ”

  
    “So you came here to sweat it out?” Sara said, and Zari nodded. Sara turned to the nearest wall, which held a wide selection of hand-held weaponry, and selected a bo-staff similar to the one Zari had set down. Sara spun to face Zari, spinning the staff into ready position.

  
    “Pick it up,” she said, nodding at the staff, and Zari’s eyes widened, but she did as Sara bid her. They squared off in the center of the mat, facing each other. Zari raised the staff, a little hesitantly.

  
    “Please don’t kill me,” she said, somewhat sheepishly. “I’m still very much in the training stage with this.”

  
    Despite herself, a tiny smile tugged at the corner of Sara’s lips. “Is that why you’re practicing with it in the middle of the night, so nobody can see if you make a mistake?”

  
    Zari nodded, and Sara adjusted her stance and re-set her grip on the staff. “Learning how to swing at the air won’t help you in a fight,” she said, striking out experimentally, nowhere near full-force, and Zari blocked her easily, the sound ringing out across the room. “Good,” Sara acknowledged, but Zari still looked nervous. “What?” Sara said.

  
    “When you came in here, you had the full assassin-vibe going,” Zari said. “Look, if you need to let off steam, I get it, go ahead - I just don’t want to end up as collateral damage in the process,” she finished wryly, and Sara rolled her eyes.

  
    “No, this is good,” she said, and she meant it. This would be better than training on her own. Taking on an instructing role would force her to concentrate on the task at hand, to exercise control in her movements. It would re-center her. “We’ll turn this into a lesson, and I’ll dial down the assassin-vibe, okay? That is, if you’re up for it,” she said with a grin. Zari’s eyes flashed. Then Sara lunged forward, and they began.

  
    ...An hour later, Sara and Zari lay on their backs on the mat, gasping for breath, sweat soaking their clothes, blinking up at the ceiling. The bo-staffs were off to the side, and the room was silent save for their exhausted breathing.

  
    “So what do you think?” Zari managed to say, between breaths, turning her head to glance at Sara. “Am I getting any better?”

  
    Sara gave an exaggerated groan, clutching at her side, where Zari had slipped through her defenses and landed a particularly well-timed strike. “I think - ” she started to say, then looked over at Zari and laughed, the soreness in her side flaring up as she did. “Well, I _was_ going to compliment you, but clearly you’re not sorry at all,” she retorted, seeing Zari’s utterly unapologetic expression, and Zari rolled her eyes.

  
    “ _One_ good hit in an hour - I’m practically a master,” she said drily, and Sara laughed again, then winced. _I’ll have Gideon heal me tomorrow,_ she thought. _After Ava._

  
    “Hey, you okay?” Zari asked, and Sara realized she’d lapsed into silence. She smiled at Zari and tried to put her heart into it.

  
    “Yeah, I’m all right,” she said. They both knew she wasn’t talking about the bruise on her side. Sara groaned again, this time for real, as she rolled over onto her stomach, her exercise-exhausted muscles crying out at the motion. She propped herself up on her elbows and rested her chin in her hands. _No time like the present to start up on that goal of making sure I check in with my team_.

  
    “So, is it Nate?” she asked, and Zari blinked, taken aback, then rolled her eyes. When Sara didn’t move, she turned away, back to staring at the ceiling.

  
    “Kind of.”

  
    “I heard you texted him today, and as soon as you did, you ran off to the Bureau,” prompted Sara. “What was that all about? Did you…”

  
    “The text didn’t go through,” Zari told her. She sat up and rested an arm on her knee. “And I didn’t ask him out,” she finished, before Sara could ask.

  
    “You didn’t?” Sara sat up too, criss-crossing her legs in front of her. “Why not? I thought you had feelings for him.”

  
    “I thought so, too, but… I don’t know. It’s complicated.” Zari sighed, then glanced over to the side of the mat, where their weapons lay beside Charlie’s headphones. She stared at them for a moment, then reached for her bo-staff and stood. She crossed the room, placing the weapon carefully back in its place on the wall. After a couple seconds, Sara followed suit.

  
    “Well if you ever want to talk about it, you can come to me, okay?” Sara said as Zari went back to the mat to pick the headphones up off the floor. Zari turned them over in her hands, distracted, before glancing up to Sara.

  
    “Thanks,” she said. “Hey, this was good. The training, I mean. Think we could have another go sometime when the sun is up?”

  
    Sara smiled. “Absolutely,” she said. “You off to bed?”

  
    Zari nodded. “I need the sleep.” She started for the door, but hesitated as she reached the threshold. “You need sleep, too, Sara,” she said after a moment. “Go back to bed.” She paused, then added quietly, and more firmly than Sara had expected, “Be there when she wakes up.”

  
    Normally, Sara would have called her out on using such an authoritative tone with her captain, but this time, she just nodded once, slowly. Zari was right, and they both knew it.

  
    Zari left the room, and Sara waited until her shadow disappeared down the hall before she exited, too, heading in the opposite direction. Arriving at her cabin door, she slipped through as silently as possible, then navigated the room in the dark, changing out of the sweaty pajama t-shirt she wore and into a cleaner outfit. When she reached the bed, she clambered in cautiously, careful not to pull Ava’s hair as she settled in behind her, wrapping her arms around the woman’s sleeping form. Without waking, Ava shifted, pressing closer, and Sara nuzzled into the slope of her neck.

  
    No, she couldn’t protect her. And yes, as hard as it was for Sara to admit, it wasn’t fair to punish herself for things that were beyond her control.

 

    Sara shifted, trying to get comfortable. Ava's legs were together, outstretched, and Sara nudged one of her feet between Ava's shins. As she settled, she felt a knot in her shoulders start to loosen, tension in her muscles start to finally dissipate. Here in the dark, with Ava in her arms, she was more at peace than she'd been in weeks.

 

    _I feel the most myself when I'm tangled up with you_. Sara smiled into Ava's hair and kissed the woman's neck lightly. _I'll have to make sure I tell you that when you're awake sometime._

  
    They were together now, and Ava was safe, and Sara would be at her side, whatever came next. It was the best she could do, the most she could give, and she would give it.     

  
    Hugging Ava close, Sara let the woman’s body heat lull her, at last, into sleep.

  
   _I’m not gonna let you down._  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there to all the guys, gals, and non-binary pals who have stuck with the story so far - thank you! Y'all rock


	7. Ariel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter seven - we're back in action, and Ava's having a rough time

Chapter 7: Ariel

  
_\- Then -_  
        

  
    Ava couldn’t help it, even though she hated herself for it: she tensed as she heard the footsteps approach the door, and flinched as the visitor stepped across the threshold and shut it behind him.

  
    “Hey there, sweetheart. Miss me?” came a jovial call from behind her, and she knew, knew without even seeing his face, that Neron was smiling as he spoke. That tone, the lightness of it, made her feel like there were ants crawling underneath her skin.

  
    Ava heard the thud of something heavy hitting the floor, then a zipper and some rustling, like paper being crumpled. A smell reached her after a few seconds, and despite herself, her mouth watered, and her stomach twinged sharply. As if she needed a reminder of how empty it was. _Food._ Neron had brought back food, something greasy and cheap from the smell of it, and it only took a few seconds for the idea of another meal to entirely dominate her mind.

  
    He’d fed her twice so far, and both times the offerings had been some variations of fast food. A cheeseburger and fries, the first time, and the second, a sandwich that clearly had some sort of chicken base, but whose meat was much too geometric to resemble anything natural. Normally, Ava put a decent amount of care and thought into the food she consumed, what went into her body; staying healthy was a point of pride as well as a fledgeling hobby. In recent months, she’d even been able to pique Sara’s interest in some of her more adventurous nutritious recipes, and several weeks ago, looking as meek as she’d ever seen him, Mick had cautiously approached her after a dinner she’d prepared for the team and asked for the recipe, to try on his own. It had been a surprise, sure, but a pleasant one. Ava had given it to him with a little smile, thinking to herself, _maybe I’m finally getting on the right track with him_.

  
    Amazing, though, how quickly all of those considerations faded away once the tally of hours passed started to rise, when the growling of her stomach started sounding more like a malicious snarl. When there arose a tightness in her muscles that didn’t go away when Neron left the room, that stayed with her even when she was alone. Especially when she was alone.

  
    How could something hollow feel so big?

  
   _How could the absence of something hurt so much?_

  
    Hunger: the great equalizer. There was nothing else that had the power to rearrange a person’s priorities so completely. How long had it been, since Neron took her? Ava could only guess. The blinds were kept drawn at all times, so she couldn’t use the daylight to track the hours. The meals, when they came, had been sporadic and irregularly spaced, so she couldn’t use them as a reference point. These two factors combined, Ava knew, would be enough to temporally disorient anybody, but it was the third factor that amplified it all, that set her on edge and never let her step back on solid ground: the sleep deprivation.

  
    She felt it in her bones, a type of exhaustion that wrapped itself around her like an invasive, poisonous vine and squeezed, not at a pressure point, but everywhere at once. Her limbs felt heavy; every once and a while, she’d blink and the room would slide in and out of focus. A headache had taken root and the base of her skull some time ago and was not subsiding. Ava could close her eyes all she wanted, but no matter how hard she tried to let go, she remained utterly, completely aware - of her surroundings, of her situation, of her body and how much everything hurt. Staying awake, she knew, worked in vicious tandem with the hunger, each amplifying the effect of the other. So, how long had she been here? A handful of days was her best guess; she simply was not able to be more specific. It felt like a month, but Ava was at least critical enough of her own compromised analytic ability to realize that any time that passed would feel longer to her, because of the ordeal she was going through.

  
   _Long enough for Sara to miss me?_

  
  _She missed you before she even left your office. Before you told her to go, that woman was already missing you,_ Ava thought to herself fiercely, and the speed and surety with which that thought materialized in her mind was both relieving and devastating.

  
_I know she misses me._

  
  _But I_ told _her to go._

  
    “Nothing to say?” Neron drawled, and Ava was snapped out of her depressing version of a mental reverie by a hand on her back, a palm pressing between her shoulder blades, like a reminder from somebody to stand up straighter for a picture. Ava jerked away - as much as she could - at the unexpected contact, and Neron’s low laugh filled the room. He grazed the dozen-or-so small cuts, like a peppering of bee stings, scattered across her back from rolling in glass shards that first morning - they were shallow, and therefore had mostly healed, save for the scarring, but the skin was still tender. Then he pulled at the back of her tank top, and she gritted her teeth as some of the fabric clung to the charcoal and dried blood of the “awake” rune’s most recent carving at the back of her shoulder.

  
    “Hmm, might need to clean that later,” Neron remarked, and it sounded more like a note to himself than another taunt to Ava. He released her shirt and stepped behind her chair to her other side, standing over her as he reached out to trace another wound, another rune, on her upper left arm. _Stay._ It burned as he touched it, and Ava’s knuckles were white gripping the armrests as he inspected his work. Neron studied the rune closely for a moment, then surveyed the rest of her, taking in the tensed hands, the tendons visibly flexing in her neck, the way her eyes followed his every move.

  
    “This one’s starting to wear off again, I see,” he said. He looked down at her with mock concern. “Don’t worry, we’ll renew the charm later.” He flashed a grin, and Ava wanted to vomit.

  
    Now Neron knelt beside her, and with one hand, he reached up and turned her face to the side, while with he other, he tugged the fabric of the tank top a little down and to the left. Tears stung her eyes at how cavalier he was, how nonchalantly he put his hands on her, and how impossible it was for her to do anything about it. She could flinch, she could tense up, but because of the _stay_ rune - stay in place, stay still - she could offer no resistance.

  
    Neron leaned in close, and Ava felt the heat of his exhales on her chest as he inspected the most recent rune. It was small, but the size hadn’t alleviated the pain of its carving, or the branding that followed, or the sealing of the spell with the charcoal finger-painted on to finish it off. The size of the rune, Ava had quickly found, was no indication at all of how strongly it would affect her.

  
    This one, for instance, had been administered just after her last meal - what, twenty-four, thirty-six hours ago? - and its impact had been immediate and ongoing.

  
     _Hush._

  
    She had no voice. Ava could make absolutely no sound at all.

  
    She’d been attacked, kidnapped, tortured, sleep deprived, immobilized. But this… her voice, it was fundamentally _hers_ , something that nobody should be capable of taking, and yet it had been done. With a symbol, with a knife, with a dizzying swooping sensation that left as suddenly as it came. With dark magic.

  
    One second she had been screaming, and the next, the echo of it simply rang in her ears. It was like she had been locked inside herself.

  
    Abruptly, Neron pulled away, stood, turned. He strode out of her line of sight, and she heard more rustling from his bag behind her. When he stepped back into her field of vision, he was holding a comically bright red box.

  
     _A Happy Meal. He brought me a fucking Happy Meal._ Ava would have laughed, if she was presently capable of reacting at all. As it was, she just stared, and tried not to let too much desperation show in her expression.

  
    “Here’s what’s going to happen,” Neron said, when she managed to tear her gaze away from the box and back to his eyes. He began to speak, and Ava listened, if only because she had to. She already knew what he was going to say.

  
     _I’ll take the charm off the ropes, then wash the charcoal from the ‘stay’ rune,_ he would begin. She’d have to untangle herself from her restraints. Then she would be permitted to use the bathroom - for exactly five minutes, and the door had to stay open. When she was finished, she would return and sit back in the chair. He would re-tie her legs, and then, only then, would she be allowed to eat.

  
    Ava waited for him to say something about the ‘hush’ rune, but the demon made no mention of it.

  
    “Do you understand?” Neron asked when he was finished listing off instructions. The Happy Meal box swayed in his hand. Still unable to speak, Ava nodded slowly. Neron set the box on the bed and went around behind her chair. There came an uneasy quivering of the air that was becoming all too familiar, that strange electricity that accompanied the spells he spoke in the language Ava didn’t know, and the ropes loosened their vice grip on her skin. Before she could start to move, however, Neron leaned in close and spoke directly in her ear.

  
    “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, but in my experience, prisoners can be… unpredictable at times, so I’ll warn you again. If you don’t follow my directions, there will be no meal, and there will be further consequences for whatever action you take.”

  
_Further consequences_. A punch, a kick, a knife, a brand, a spell? Something even more twisted that he hadn’t tried on her yet? Ava didn’t know the specifics of what he had in mind if she didn’t obey, but she didn’t need to.

  
_I’m gonna get through this._

  
_And to do that, I need to eat_.

  
     _Can’t pull off a successful escape attempt on an empty stomach._

  
    Neron straightened up behind her, and Ava waited for him to step around to the side and sit casually on the bed, watching her, before she set to work wriggling out of the ropes. As she unwound them, the skin directly beneath them flashed white, then red as blood flow was renewed. The pattern of the rope was visible, like it had been tattooed on.

  
    Dizziness swept over her as she stood, spots dancing in her vision, and she blinked them away as she slowly walked to the bathroom. Every step reminded her of another injury she’d sustained, but she clenched her jaw and kept moving.

  
     _My time will come_. She felt Neron’s eyes on her as she pushed the door open. Though he didn’t move from his vantage point of the bed when she sat on the toilet - her bruised ribs crying out in protest at the motion - she did see out of the corner of her eye that he turned his head tactfully away.

  
    There was no mirror over the sink. He had removed it a while ago, probably after he saw her eyeing it after the first bathroom break. Broken glass could make a good weapon. Ava didn’t need to see her reflection to know how she looked; she could feel the swelling, see the discoloration of the bruises on the rest of her body. She took her time washing her hands. Her knuckles were raw.

  
     _From hitting him back._

  
    Exhaustion made it feel like gravity was trying to swallow her body whole every time she took a step forward. She hesitated before sitting back in the chair, but only for a second.

  
_I need to eat._ It was a mantra. It was a chance. _Can’t escape on an empty stomach._

  
   _You have to be smart, Ava_. This thought was one she repeated to herself, over and over, as Neron bent down to re-bind her shins to the legs of the chair. _You have to be smart._ She couldn’t tell if the voice in her head sounded more like herself, or like Sara.

  
    When Ava was again bound to the chair, ropes securing her torso to the back of it as well, Neron finally, finally gave her the meal. He set the obnoxiously red box in her lap and she wasted no time, waiting only as long as it took for his hand to pull away before starting on it.

  
    There was a cheeseburger. Fries. It was greasy, it was meager, but it was something. The hardest part was not inhaling it all in one gulp; Ava put considerable effort into pacing herself, as much as she could stand. Little bites, breaks in between. It wasn’t about savoring the flavor - no, this was so her stomach, already conditioned during captivity to accept smaller quantities, wouldn’t reject the offering. _This is all I get, and I don’t know when more is coming. It won’t do me any good if I throw it all up._

  
    Even with her tedious pacing, the food was gone all too quickly, and the moment she finished, Neron snatched the empty box from her lap and tossed it in the trash.

  
    He’s usually more talkative, Ava noted. He typically questioned her while she ate, asking about her life, her job. Like they were colleagues, like they were chatting over a quick lunch at the office. He’s been quieter today, more so than usual. It wasn’t as if she enjoyed the conversation, but the lack of it now made her uneasy.

  
     _I suppose, though, it wouldn’t be much of a conversation, since I can’t talk back_.

  
    Wordlessly, Neron stood beside her and reached down to re-secure one arm to an armrest. Before he could, she jerked her hand away. His eyes flashed to her warningly, but Ava shook her head. _Not an escape attempt_. As if this, here, half-tied-down and exhausted, would be where she chose to take a stand. Ava brought her hand up, pointer finger hovering right above the hot, inflamed skin of her upper-left chest. The ‘hush’ rune, black with charcoal, thick with dark magic.

  
    “Missing your voice, Ariel?” Neron asked, then he raised an eyebrow. “Did you even get that reference? I’d guess you didn’t have much time to watch Disney movies in your formative years, seeing as you didn’t have any, as a clone.”

  
    Ava _had_ understood the reference, in fact; as part of her research to better connect with agents at the Time Bureau after she’d found out she was a clone, she’d done a lot of reading on things that people typically learned or experienced during their childhoods. She hadn’t actually watched the movies, of course; she supposed, at the time, that the Wikipedia summaries would suffice. Conclusion: bizarre stories, with bizarre morals and questionable logic, but that somehow seemed to be part of the appeal.

  
    Ariel. She was Ariel through a broken mirror, a warped reflection of the fairy tale. Yes, there was magic here, but she wasn’t trying to win any prince’s love.

  
     _The princess already has my love. She’s just not coming to save me, because she has no fucking clue how ‘in distress’ I really am._

  
    “Don’t worry, you won’t be mute forever,” Neron said, moving on, cinching the ropes tight again and sealing the deal with the charm that keep them in place. “We’re going to need clear verbal permission before Tabitha can take up residence. Are you ready to give it?”

  
    Ava’s only answer was a steely stare, and Neron shrugged. “Thought so. In that case, the spell stays in place, for a little while longer, at least. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the screaming, and the walls are heavily warded enough that the neighbors don’t even know you’re here, but listening to it does get somewhat taxing after a while, and I’m not really in the mood.”

  
_Not in the mood to listen to my screaming. That doesn’t mean he’s not in the mood to give me reasons to scream._

  
    It had taken all of five minutes, after meeting Neron, to gather that the demon liked the sound of his own voice, but it seemed now that the time for words was over. Normally - _normally, like this is normal, like any of this shitshow is motherfucking normal_ \- Ava would try to keep him talking, keep him spinning his own wheels, anything to keep his hands empty. Even when he was hitting her with them, it was better than the alternative - that alternative being, gripping the carved handle of that wickedly sharp knife. Taking that knife and carving into her skin.

  
    Magically muted as she was, Ava was unable to prompt a continuation of the monologue. Neron turned to the dresser and opened the top drawer, snatching up the knife from it and spinning back to face her. His eyes raked over her form, and Ava felt a knot forming in her throat. She hated this, hated that just the thought of what was to come affected her this way. Neron fiddled with the knife as he stood, twirling it first one way, then the other. _I hope he cuts himself on it,_ Ava found herself thinking as she sat there, unable to move, unable to do anything but wait. She could almost feel his eyes on her, as they lingered on one limb here, another one there. _Picking a target._ The ‘hush’ rune on her chest throbbed, and prickled where the charcoal paste had been ground into the wound.

  
    After a moment, Neron nodded once, mostly to himself, and stepped forward, closing the distance between them swiftly. Instead of standing or kneeling behind or beside her, as he had for the others, this time the demon knelt before her. Callously, he bent slightly and put his right hand on the top of her right thigh, both gripping the leg to keep it in place and pulling the skin back, to make his work area taut. Tears burned her eyes at the touch. With the way she was tied, one shin bound to each leg of the chair, her knees were naturally spread apart, and even though Neron had already dismissed the notion of adding any kind of sexual element to her torment, the position still made her feel so _fucking_ vulnerable. Especially when his target was, apparently, just above her right knee, which necessitated him holding her leg down like this to keep it still.

  
   _If he really wanted me still, why doesn’t he just go over the ‘stay’ rune again?_

  
_What if whatever he’s about to do will make it so that doesn’t matter anyway?_

  
    God, it was making her paranoid.

  
    Through the haze of her escalating panic, Ava noted that this time, he was holding her still with this right hand, while handling the knife in his left. _Must be ambidextrous. That’s just great_. His elbow dug into her other thigh, jabbing at a bruise there, and she inhaled sharply, but Neron didn’t even look up at her face, not even when her breaths became quicker and more shallow with nerves. He was completely focused, even more so than he’d ever been before, and this factor added another layer to her apprehension. _As if it needed another layer. As if the rest wasn’t enough._

  
    The pain of this rune hit her like all the others had: so intensely that it knocked the wind out of her. There was no way to prepare for it, and - thanks to the ‘awake’ rune and the ‘stay’ rune and all her injuries and her exhaustion and the minor detail that she was physically tied down - there was no way to escape from it, either. Unfortunately, she knew that part was coming. It was the only thing she could plan for, that inevitability of the hurt.

  
    Her leg jerked involuntarily as the knife pierced the skin and Neron started to cut, but the reaction did nothing to dissuade his actions; instead, he just put more pressure on her leg to hold it in place and kept cutting. Carving. Ava squeezed her eyes shut, tears falling hot on her face. _This is worse,_ she realized distantly as her mind fought fruitlessly against the ‘awake’ rune. Screaming was a release, a way to express the hurt, and he’d taken that away, too.

  
    Knowing it was useless didn’t stop Ava from straining against the ropes. At least the friction gave her something else to focus on. Her stomach churned suddenly, and it took all of Ava’s willpower not to throw up the meal she’d just consumed: there was one sound in the room, aside from her hyperventilation and Neron’s measured breathing.

  
    The scrape of the knife as it cut into her body. She could _hear_ it. And as soon as she noticed it, her mind was suddenly, sickeningly unable to focus on anything else.

  
    Perhaps that was what did it - perhaps that was the push, that horrible, gut-wrenching sound.

  
    Ava squeezed her eyes shut again, and this time, when she opened them, she found herself - impossibly - in someplace else. Somewhere entirely different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a while - college finals were intense, and I started a new summer internship. HOWEVER, get ready, because the rest of this story is on its way :) From now on, I'm going to do my best to update once a week, on Thursday nights (rest assured that at least next week's update will definitely be on time, because I already have that chapter written). Thanks for sticking with me! Hope you liked it, let me know what you think!


	8. Hush

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter eight - I know some of you were hoping this would be a cute, fluffy Avalance chapter, but alas, you'll have to wait another week for that, hope you can forgive me (and after the Avalance next week, the following week there's gonna be some more Zarlie content, as my writer-penance for what I'm putting Ava through in this chapter). Here we go...

Chapter 8: Hush   
 

  
_\- Then -_

  
  
    “Welcome to MegaStor! Is there anything I can help you find today?”

  
    Ava blinked.

  
    “Gary?”

  
    His hair was combed back, his face was plastered with that ridiculously wide, over-enthusiastic grin he wore so often, and over his shirt he wore a recycling-bin-blue vest. _It’s definitely him, but what is he doing here - what the hell am_ I _doing here -_

  
_Where even_ is _here?_

  
    Ava spun in a slow circle, observations fluttering in disconnectedly: _cool white linoleum floors. Shelves. Bright lights. Furniture. Pillows…?_ And people, some in pairs, some alone, meandering. None looked particularly distressed, but that only made Ava more anxious, because for some reason, she felt incredibly distressed, and she wasn’t entirely sure why.

  
    “That’s me,” Gary replied brightly, tapping a sticker name-tag on the upper left corner of his vest with a jolliness that was somehow both endearing and eye-roll-inducing, and Ava whipped back around to face him as he continued, “How can I be of assistance?”

  
    They were standing about six feet apart, but in the span of a second, Ava closed that distance between them and grabbed Gary by the shoulders.

  
    “Gary, what the hell is this place? What am I doing here, what are we - ” Ava swallowed. She blinked several times, but each time she opened her eyes, the image before her stayed clear: a mildly alarmed-looking Gary, eyes a little wide, brow a little furrowed. Ava felt dizzy. She tightened her grip on Gary’s shoulders.

  
    Gary frowned for a second, but after a moment, the smile returned. “You’re in MegaStor!”

  
    A couple, two young men holding hands, were giving Ava strange looks as they passed her, and Ava glanced around. She was still grabbing Gary, and the two of them stood in the center of a center aisle. There were - _are those living room displays_?

  
    “I’m in IKEA,” Ava said slowly, and she let go of Gary, taking a step back. Gary appeared moderately relieved, and he straightened his vest.

  
    “No, you’re in MegaStor,” he repeated in an equally slow intonation, like he was dealing with…

  
   _A difficult customer. Which… I suppose I am?_ Ava sighed, and Gary’s brow furrowed.

  
    “Are you feeling all right? If you want to sit down, I can direct you over here to our large selection of plush seating arrangements, or we also have options with more back support, if that’s what you prefer - ”

  
    Gary steered Ava down their aisle and around a corner, gesturing grandly at the seating choices before them like it was the most exciting thing in the world, and Ava sank into the first one her knee bumped against, which turned out to be a bright red armchair with soft cushions four inches thick. She leaned her head back, pinching the bridge of her nose, and sighed deeply. When she opened her eyes and looked up, she started. Gary was still there, standing about five feet away, hands clasped behind his back, waiting with an expectant expression.

  
   _Wrong. This feels wrong._

  
    Ava had a wicked headache, but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from - usually she could pinpoint the source, or at least localize it to the back or front of her skull. Not this time. This felt like her head was locked in a vice, and somehow being squeezed from all sides. She tried to reach back into her memory, figure out if she’d hit her head recently - figure out how she got here, and why Gary was working at a department store - but each time she felt like she was on the edge of grasping a sliver of knowledge, it slipped away.

  
    A high-pitched shriek pierced the air, and Ava jolted violently in the plush armchair. Her eyes flitted wildly around until she identified the source of the sound: a young girl, blonde hair pulled back into a high ponytail, had thrown a stuffed unicorn at another girl her age, and as Ava watched, the second girl dodged the toy and darted forward.

  
    “You’re it!” she said, giggling, then dashed in the opposite direction, her companion hot on her heels, and Ava watched them until they darted out of her sight. She slumped back in the chair, heart racing erratically. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of her neck, and Ava shivered.

  
   _Sweating, why am I sweating? And why do I feel so cold?_

  
    Ava looked down at herself. She wore a pair of professional black pants, black flats, and a dressy white tank top, the kind she normally wore under a blazer at work. She stared at her hands, turning them back and forth in front of her like they were foreign objects. They were clean, unblemished, and this, too, somehow felt wrong.

  
    The young girl’s playful shriek again rang through the store, and this time, the sound was followed by a flash through her mind: not an image, but another sound, a parallel one. A different scream, much more desperate, and much more familiar. Her own. Ava closed her eyes, and now a few disjointed images did tumble up to the surface: _a different chair, with a straight wooden back and solid armrests; a motel room door with black symbols etched all over it; a tupperware with a blue lid filled with… cookies? and hands, her own hands, knuckles raw and bloody, veins tense as her fingers curled into fists, though the arms were immobile._

  
    “Gary, I need a pen, and something to write on,” Ava said, opening her eyes, and Gary stepped forward, all too eager to help. He tugged a pen free from a breast pocket in his vest, and pulled a tiny notebook out of the same pocket. “Thanks,” she said, practically snatching them from his hands, and he stepped back again as she started to scribble down the fragments.

  
    Ava didn’t know what was going on, but she knew enough to realize that something was wrong with her memory, and she suspected it was beyond what could become of a nasty bump on the head. _Some kind of magic, it must be._ Ava didn’t know how she got here, but she wasn’t entirely sure that here was a real place. Gary didn’t work at a department store in his free time - she was his boss, she knew damn well that he didn’t have enough free time for that. If nothing else, the brief but disturbing flashes in her head told her that things were not as they seemed.

  
   _So what is this? A dreamscape? Some kind of astral projection?_ All her experience at the Time Bureau had taught her - among various other particular life skills and knowledge - that nothing, no idea or myth or twisted daydream of a situation - was too bizarre to be real. Ava touched the pen to the paper again, then stopped. As quickly as they had come, the images in her mind were already fading, and they were not being replaced by any new helpful information. She read back over what she’d written a few times, to lodge it in her head as firmly as possible, then glanced back up, actually hoping this time to see Gary still standing before her, and she was relieved when she saw he was.

  
    “Gary, I need you to help me,” Ava said, trying not to sound as panicked as she was beginning to feel. Either she was better at hiding her emotions than she thought, or Gary was entirely oblivious, because his reply was as chipper as ever.

  
    “Of course! What exactly are you looking for? We have furniture for any style you can imagine, or if you’re looking for something more in the home-decor area, we can look over here past aisle seven - ” he started to walk backwards, pointing off to his right, but Ava shook her head and cut him off.

  
    “No, Gary, that’s not - look, I need you to tell me where I am. Where I really am,” she said quickly, when Gary started to answer ‘MegaStor’ again. “This whole place feels off, so cut the crap, I know I’m not in some discount IKEA.”

  
    For the first time, Gary frowned. _Is that fear in his eyes?_ His hands were clasped in front of him now, and he flexed his fingers nervously.

  
    “This is a dangerous topic,” Gary said. Suddenly he brightened. “Would you rather talk about our sale in the houseplant section? I’m positive you’ll find something you like - ”

  
    Ava stood up too fast, head spinning, and threw up her arms in exasperation. “Take me to your manager,” she demanded, and Gary closed his mouth quickly. “The boss, the owner, whoever that is, I want to talk to them. Get me someone who can give me some answers here.”

  
    Gary appeared to be thinking deeply, for the first time seriously considering how he was about to answer.

  
    “I suppose…” he said slowly, making eye contact with Ava, “The owner here would be you.”

  
    Ava’s first instinct was to rub her temples and groan with frustration at this obviously ridiculous response, but something in Gary’s expression made her pause. “What do you mean?” asked.

  
    “Well,” Gary said, gesturing around at the aisles and furniture and ambient customer foot traffic, “This is all in your head, so I guess you would be considered the owner.”

  
    “In my head?” Ava echoed, and ironically, her words were accompanied by another surge of her headache. She glanced around. Everything - the red chair she’d been sitting on, the kitchen arrangements off to the left, the people chatting quietly to each other as they shopped - they all _looked_ normal, but something was undeniably off about them, and Gary seemed to be providing an explanation for it.

  
    “If this is all in my head, why are _you_ here? Why is any of this happening?”

  
    Gary shrugged, and this time Ava did groan, and slumped back into the red armchair. Come on, Ava. Think. The went back through the language Gary had used, and something about it stood out.

  
    “You said I could be considered the owner of this place,” Ava said, looking up at Gary. “But you didn’t say I was the boss, or the manager.”

  
    Gary shuffled his feet, fidgeting with his hands again.

  
    “Gary - ” Ava said, allowing a warning tone to thread through the word. She was getting tired of this. His eyes flashed to hers quickly.

  
    “Well technically, I’m not Gary, I’m a mental projection of the ideas and images and personality you associate with the man called Gary, so you see, I can’t really have a boss.”

  
    He spoke fast, words tumbling over each other, and Ava’s eyes narrowed. She was getting closer, she could feel it.

  
    Just as that thought occurred to her, the lights flickered in the store. Ava stood up, and around her, other customers glanced around. Some kids’ expressions were curious, but Ava noticed that all of the adults’ faces wore a different emotion: worry. Concern. After a few seconds, the buzz of the fluorescents steadied, and the store was again flooded with light. Strangely, the light seemed brighter than before, harsher. More intense. And were there fewer customers around now? A few seconds’ survey of the immediate area told Ava that yes, there was definitely less foot traffic around her than there had been just a few moments before. A chill came over her, like somebody had just adjusted the thermostat down five degrees.

  
    Ava stood up again, and this time, she had a purpose in mind.

  
   _I need to get out of this bloody place._ Without saying a word to Gary, she scanned her surroundings, and - finding no clear indication as to which direction led to an exit - picked an aisle and strode off. Gary sputtered as she brushed past him, but she didn’t have the patience for the nervous ramblings of a man who, by his own admission, was a mere figment of her imagination.

  
    Ava walked briskly, staying sharp for any ‘exit’ signs, but it seemed that whatever recesses of her subconscious had constructed this mess of a mental maze was less than forthcoming in that regard. She stormed through aisle after aisle of home decor, picture frames and rustic wooden signs and impractically-sized wicker baskets, all with cutesy little inspirational phrases engraved on them, things like ‘Live, Laugh, Love,” and “Home is where the Heart is.” Normally, she’d find these things mildly endearing; sure, Sara would roll her eyes at them, they weren’t exactly the ex-assassin’s style, but Ava liked having someone immediately come to mind when she read the phrase “Home is where the Heart is.” Right now, though, Ava barely spared the trinkets a glance as she paced determinedly to where she thought the exit must be.

  
    After what seemed like at least ten minutes of weaving through shelves and receiving some raised eyebrows from other customers, curious at her hurry, Ava found herself in a small clearing at suddenly stopped short.

  
    Before her was Gary. He looked very in his element, grinning and nodding politely as he directed an elderly couple in some far-off direction. A little kid was with them, and he bent down to give him a high-five. As the trio scuttled off, Ava gave the surrounding area another once-over, just to be sure.

  
    No, she wasn’t mistaken - she was back where she’d started.

  
  _But I was so careful not to double back? …Or was I?_ She had been pretty focused, but maybe she’d gotten too much in her own head.

  
   _I must’ve just taken one too many turns. This place is a maze,_ Ava thought. Strange - she didn’t know whether _she_ was at fault for the convoluted setup, or if whatever circumstances had brought her here were the culprits. _Whatever or whoever._ Ava’s stomach turned uneasily as she recalled Gary hurriedly trying to switch topics when she asked about her whereabouts, saying it was a dangerous conversation. That, combined with his weird avoidance of her question when she asked who the manager of the store was.

  
    Across the clearing, Gary was straightening the boxes of what looked like Barbie dolls, and Ava spun on her heel and started off in a different direction before he could turn and see her.

  
   _Straight. Just walk straight. Eventually you’ll hit a wall, and you can turn, and if you follow the wall, it will lead you to an exit one way or another. It has to._ But the next time Ava looked up, she found herself staring up at the same clearing. This time Gary was busying himself with some kind of feather duster, cleaning the top of one of the shelves. Her brows furrowed, and she picked a new direction to start again.

  
    And again.

  
    And again.

  
    Three times, she re-directed her efforts. Four. _Five?_ Each time, she wound up back at that clearing, that same opening in the aisles, with Gary meandering about doing some task or another, looking infuriatingly content in his work.

  
    Ava became aware that her heart was beating faster. The rapid _thud-thud_ came as a slight surprise; usually, she prided herself in staying calm under pressure, but there was something about this place that set her on edge. Ava rounded a corner and shivered; the store felt another five degrees colder.

  
    Back at the clearing, and back around she turned, picking a new aisle, a new direction. She was running out of new directions, and she felt her breaths start to get quicker.

  
   _Straight. I just need to go straight. I’ll walk until I hit a wall, one of the outer ones, then follow the wall around until I get to a door. It can’t go on forever. Can it?_ The words became a mantra in her mind: _straight, just go straight._

  
    A memory of Sara’s voice quipped in her ear, _Straight? You’ve never been very good at that._ Ava smiled briefly. _Sara. Where was she? And why was she not with her?_ Ava felt very alone, suddenly, and it was a hollow, hungry sensation that threatened to make her dizzy, sway her balance.

  
    Sometime while she’d been navigating - or attempting to navigate - through the store, Ava realized, she had lost her grip on the details of exactly why she needed to go. She got the sense, now, that she’d never really had a crystal-clear picture, but surely she’d had something more than… this? This odd emptiness where her memory should be, the void where the answers should reside, was neighbored unwelcomely by a growing and increasingly desperate sense of dread. Ava paused briefly between steps, hand patting her pocket. She felt like something was supposed to be in there. _Paper? I'm pretty sure I just wrote something down, but what was it?_ After a few seconds, she realized that whatever she may have written down was long gone now, probably lost in her haste and frantic wandering. 

  
   _Had there been music playing in the store, over the speakers? One of those neutrally catchy playlists of pop songs that registered as ambient noise?_ Yes, Ava decided as the question occurred to her, there had definitely been music playing in the store at one point, but there was no longer any music now. Instead, her footsteps fell fast against the cold white floors, echoing eerily off the shelves. And when was the last time she had seen another customer? It had been a while. _Too long._ Ava couldn’t put a number, now, on how many times she’d struck out to find an exit, how many times she’d wound up back at the clearing.

  
     _Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result - that’s the definition of insanity_ , her brain supplied obtrusively, and rather unhelpfully. Hadn’t she read that somewhere? Or heard it? Ava couldn’t pinpoint it, but she shook her head, trying to be rid of the thought. _I’ve been changing directions, I’ve been trying new solutions_ , she told herself.

  
_Out. I need to get out of here_.

  
    When she next found herself back at what she informally dubbed ‘Gary’s clearing,’ instead of taking off again, she slipped into the red armchair where he’d guided her originally. Her legs trembled slightly as she eased herself down, and she knew it wasn’t from the chill, which had started to seep into her more deeply. Her mind felt disorganized, her thoughts scattered. She couldn’t focus; her memories - on how she got here, what she was doing here, what she needed to do now - were hazy, when present at all. The lights flickered again, and in her periphery, Gary glanced around with widened eyes, but Ava barely glanced up. The only thing that was clear, which had remained so through this whole ordeal, was the pressing urge to get _out_ , but her repeated attempts followed by repeated failures to accomplish what should have been a simple task left her feeling incompetent. _Inadequate._ That word threatened to bounce around in her head and knock on some mental doors she had no desire to open right now, so instead she cast her gaze up, catching her breath. She started; Gary was standing several feet back, hands clasped behind him, watching her unblinkingly with an expression of concern. It was unnerving.

  
    “Jesus, Gary,” Ava muttered to herself, then sat up a little straighter in the armchair. Hearing his name, he stepped forward eagerly. “Welcome back!” He started. “Can I interest you in - ”

  
_We’re not doing this again._ Her patience had been thin before; now, it was nonexistent.

  
    “Gary, why can’t I find the exit?” Ava interrupted him. To her ears, her voice sounded more shrill than it normally did, her tension palpable, like a taught wire. “I just want to get out of here, I need - I need to get out of here. And where did everybody else go? And why is it so _fucking_ cold?” At the last word, another shiver, this one more violent than the last, shook her entire torso involuntarily. Gary, unfazed by this movement, seemed troubled by her words. After a pause just a few seconds too long, he answered her.

  
    “You can’t leave unless you buy something,” Gary supplied slowly.

  
    Ava blinked wearily, mildly suspicious. “You mean if I find something to buy, I’ll be able to get to an exit?” She massaged her temples. “I swear I’ve been going in circles, no matter which way I try, I always seem to end up here.” She looked back up at Gary. He swallowed and said nothing else. His eyes were darting around them, but when Ava turned, she saw nothing out of the ordinary - that is, nothing more out of the ordinary than the rest of the twisted circus she found herself in. No more customers, just some flickering fluorescents in a massive department store that now felt like it was empty, save for the two of them.

  
    “Look, Gary, or not-Gary, ” - this whole thing was giving her a headache - “In my head or not, this place is creepy as hell, and I just need to find an exit. You said if I buy something, I can go?” She stood, trying to remember where she’d seen those inspirational signs. They bordered on saccharine, but then, at this point, she would take any encouragement she could get right now.

  
    “Yes, but - ” Gary started, but she was gone again before he could finish. She wandered off to the left, down aisles and pristine shelves. There were no signs for anything, but she let her feet carry her to her best estimate of where she’d seen what she was looking for. Her footfalls were loud, too loud, and though she knew that they were taking her closer to her destination, each one gave her the unsettling sensation that something else was advancing closer and closer upon her.

  
    Finally, after what felt like another several minutes, though it could have been hours for all she knew - time felt different here, stale and nonlinear - she stopped walking. This was the aisle, she knew it; she’d walked through it several times earlier, and passed it several more. She glanced at the shelves, hand reaching out in front of her, already blindly grasping for the first cheesy sign or wicker basket she could grab, but as her eyes flicked up and followed its trajectory and the contents of the shelves came into sharp focus, Ava’s breath caught in her throat, and her hand dropped abruptly. Her pulse was louder in her ears, rushing, deafening.

  
    Gone were the wicker baskets, the faux-wood-carved signs, the picture frames with happy actors smiling at families as manufactured as the material of the product they were selling. Instead, the shelves were now lined with sleek plastic boxes, each about a foot in height. The front of each was composed of a clear cellophane cover, and behind the cover was a doll.

  
    A doll with her face.

  
    They all had her face.

  
     _Fuck no. Fuck this._ Ava wasn’t sure if she thought it or said it aloud, but either way, she was stumbling backwards before her brain even managed to form a coherent command to her feet. She picked the first direction that came to mind: _Away. I have to get away from here._ She scrambled to another aisle, but to her horror, she once more found herself staring down row of dolls, miniatures of herself, each dressed immaculately in differing outfits.

  
    A high-pitched whine filled her ears - the fluorescents, overhead, suddenly seemed bone-jarringly loud. Aside from that, and her own heart hammering, the store was quiet; there were no signs of life, anywhere. Any trace of other shoppers had long gone. Ava glanced around for the clearing with the plush red chair, where she’d reliably found Gary up to this point, but she had run to a different section of the store, which despite all of her navigating earlier in search of an exit, was unfamiliar.

  
    Ava swallowed; the lights were too bright, and it made the shelves have too few shadows. The result was that the store was awash in an eerie affection that made everything seem at once too flat and not quite real.

  
   _But it isn't real, isn’t that what Gary said? If this is all in my head, why can’t I change it? Why aren’t I in control?_

  
    Ava’s eyes were squeezed shut, and when she opened them, she was just as alone as she had been before. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her, but that may have just been the hundreds of doll eyes that she could’ve sworn followed her as she stepped forward cautiously. With trembling fingers, she reached for one of the boxes at the end of the shelf, bringing it close so she could read the fine print of the label.

  
    FASHION-AVA, read the main label. Behind the cellophane, the doll with her face was wearing a shimmery gold dress that draped elegantly off one shoulder. The number hugged the doll’s plastic curves, all the way down to mid-thigh, where it sloped and then tapered off. She wore matching high heeled shoes and a painted, unfeeling, plastic smile.

  
    Ava felt a prickle at the back of her neck and she whipped around, but nobody was there. After a few seconds, she forced herself to continue studying the doll. Below the cellophane, on the plastic display part of the box, bold white letters proclaimed short marketing phrases followed by oversized exclamation points.

  
    YOUR AVA-DOLL COMES READY FOR PLAY!

  
    NO FURTHER ASSEMBLY REQUIRED!

  
    LATEST FASHION MODEL!

  
    ONE OF 1,000 SPECIAL DESIGNS!

  
    The entire affair had twisted her stomach into knots, but the last sentence was a gut punch. She’d come a long way and gone through a lot of personal growth since realizing she was a clone and then learning to come to terms with it. Ava had built a life for herself, a real life, with a job that mattered to her, friends that cared about her, hobbies that she could call her own; she had a home, she was part of a team, she was in love. And yet.

  
   _And yet._

  
    Staring down at the doll in her hands, all neatly wrapped and packaged, Ava felt her eyes blur and burn. A few tears fell, hitting the cellophane with muted thuds, as if each one had a penny’s weight to it. Her hand, holding the doll, shook, and the salty drops rolled down the box to one corner and dripped to the cold white linoleum floor.

  
    Ava felt small. Insignificant. Unremarkable. But above all that, she felt alone.

  
    She drew in a shallow breath, than another, and blinked quickly. The world came into focus again, and it took her a second to register the last words printed on the doll’s box, in a font almost too minuscule to read; she had to squint to make it out.

  
    MADE BY NERON.

  
    The moment she read it, two things happened simultaneously. One, her stomach dropped, and she felt a spike of dread so piercing that it felt as though her lung had been punctured. She waited, but no memories accompanied the terrifying sensation, and this, to her, made it all the more frightening.

  
    Two, a voice came onto the loudspeaker, crackling out a broad command so suddenly that Ava dropped the doll when the sound jolted her.

  
    “Attention all shoppers,” the voice said. Ava couldn’t identify it, but soon, the identity didn’t seem to matter nearly as much as the contents of its message.

  
    “One of the life-size Ava models has malfunctioned and is loose in the store,” the voice continued with palpable urgency. “It is of utmost importance that it be returned to its packaging as soon as possible, so the appropriate repairs can be made.”

  
    Fear is a rote thing. While the circumstances of its occurrence can be convoluted affairs, the emotion itself is rather straightforward. Likewise, the body’s responses to fear are hard-wired into a person’s very physiology, with every attribute from the mechanisms of synaptic signal transduction, sending messages through neurons in the brain to the rest of the body, to the capacity of the muscles to remember certain essential motions - _run, hide, freeze, fight_ \- catering to the ability to react to that emotion. So, although Ava’s mind was cluttered with a torrent of complicated responses to this latest event, it was not her mind that was tasked with responding to the situation. Her body took care of that.

  
    No more stumbling backwards, no more freezing in shock. Ava was full-on sprinting through the aisles, careening around corners, tearing through the store. Her lungs burned, but her eyes were clear, the adrenaline cutting through some of her mental turmoil and sharpening her focus.

  
     _Not fast enough. Not sharp enough._

  
_Not enough._

  
    Ava burst through a narrow opening between two aisles… and found herself back in the same clearing, with the same red armchair. Now, however, Gary was nowhere to be found, and Ava was no longer alone.

  
    Shoppers lined the clearing, standing silently, staring at her. Adults, children, elderly. The older ones watched her warily, looking her up and down like she was something less than human, something dangerous. The children stared blankly forward with glassy eyes. Ava spun around, but already the gap she had run through had filled with more shoppers. Still more were gathering behind the ones that had already arrived. She was surrounded.

  
    Ava turned, whipping her head back and forth as she searched for a break in the mass of people that had clustered around her, but her efforts were in vain. As she watched, the children seemed to be pushed to the back of the crowd, away from her, leaving only hostile faces near. The group drew collectively closer. Ava opened her mouth, then closed it again. What could she say to these people?

  
   _I’m not the droid you’re looking for?_

  
    Sara would have laughed. Charlie too, probably. Now, though, there was no humor to be found. She could hear them whispering to each other, muttering, their eyes wary, angry, on edge.

  
   _They say it escaped earlier, it’s been walking around like it’s one of us._

  
_Look at the eyes, so realistic, I wonder how they make the breathing look so real?_

  
_Must be something wrong with the original wiring, they’re not supposed to act like this._

  
_Won’t be able to sell that one now. Have to send it back to the factory for reprogramming, or maybe take it apart. Shame, they got the figure right on it, too, look at that body._

  
    Ava’s face burned, and her blood felt like fire. She grit her teeth and put her hands up. Part of her squirmed a bit inside, at the notion of actually fighting against these people - they’re civilians, they’re to be protected, or so taught her training. That part vanished quickly as the crowd descended upon her, all at once, though she had heard no verbal command given.

  
    A hand entangled with her hair, pulled. Her eyes watered, her head jerked back.

  
    Her fist connected with a man’s face, and he went down, but another took his place. She struck out again, and again. Most made meaningful connections, but eventually, somebody got hold of her wrists, then her arms. Her legs kicked out, and she felt her successful impacts reverberating through the rest of her body, but these limbs, too, were eventually subdued.

  
    Ava wasn’t sure how many people were involved when she was moved to another section of the store. _Ten? Twenty? More?_ There were at least six different pairs of hands working to restrain her in some way. Bright pink nails dug into her forearms, drawing blood in little crescent-moons. A fist drove into her side, and she doubled over. Her assailants took advantage of her momentary weakness to wrench her arms behind her back. Her hair had fallen in her face, and people crowded close. She was half-pushed, half physically dragged along, though not for lack of resistance on her part. Every step, she struggled, heels scrambling on the white floors, searching frantically for traction and finding none. Her head was forced down, and only flashes of the fluorescent lights, visible through her own tangled hair and in between the mass of people surrounding her, gave tangible indication that they were, in fact, moving to precisely where she did not want to go.

  
    Ava had never suffered from severe claustrophobia, but prolonged stays in tight spaces tended to render her on edge and anxious. At the center of this antagonistic horde, however, under duress, these underpinnings of unease manifested full-force. Her breaths grew more shallow, no matter how hard she tried to control them; she was sweating, but felt cold at the time time, and dizziness swept over her, threatening to leave her without any semblance of her own balance at all. The fact that what she was experiencing was, as Gary had indicated, all in her own head, would have been irrelevant to Ava at this moment, if the thought had occurred to her then; however, this thought did not occur to her. It _felt_ real, from the friction burns on her heels from scraping against the floor - her shoes had been torn violently off, in the scuffle - to the rapidly-forming bruises on her limbs where steely fingers gripped her, to the grotesque details of the merchandise on display in the aisle where the horde eventually stopped.

  
    There was a box for every design, it seemed. Every whim, every fancy could be indulged, with just the right attire, or accessories, or theme. Toys, housemaids, action characters, dinner dates, ornaments for a stylized mansion. These dolls - these clones - had the same painted smiles as the ones Ava had seen earlier, but they possessed one essential variation: they were life-sized.

  
    A new wave of panic coursed through Ava as she registered where they were trying to put her, but renewed attempts to thwart their insidious efforts were hampered, infuriatingly - and terrifyingly - by her own body. Her hands had begun seizing up, her fingers forced as if in one coordinated muscle cramp into rigid positions, pressed together, thumb held in against the palm. Her wrists were bent forward of their own accord, and the rest of her arms were overtaken by a tingling sensation that soon spread to her legs as well.

  
   _It’s the hyperventilation,_ some vaguely rational corner of her brain tried to inform the actively panicking rest of her _. Your limbs aren’t getting enough oxygen, so your body is temporarily paralyzing itself just to stay alive._

  
    Ava had been shouting at one point, and somebody, a man with large, meaty fingers, had clamped his hand around her mouth to muffle her cries. She’d bitten him savagely, and the hand had left her face, but the action had left the thick, sickening taste of someone else’s blood in her mouth.

  
    Head spinning, body aching, limbs not obeying her commands, lungs screaming for more than the shallow swallows of air she could presently deliver, Ava was entirely unable to prevent the next tide of motion, whose events seemed to unfold in a single wave. With overwhelming force from a dozen clamoring, violent hands, she was thrust forward into an empty box. Though from the outside, they had appeared to be constructed from cardboard, a rough impact of her shoulder on the back of the enclosure indicated that this was not the case; her narrow prison was made of something far sturdier, far less pliable. However, Ava could barely focus on this detail; her senses, as well as her body, were being assailed from all sides. This being the case, the action of the box’s front cover, its door of sorts, being swung shut tightly created a new shock to her system.

  
    The display case that she had been forced into had a glass equivalent of what had been a cellophane cover, for the toy-sized dolls. Ava wanted to beat her hands against it, but she still wasn’t able to control her breathing enough to allow oxygen to return to her extremities and dissolve the seizing of her muscles. The hyperventilation was causing violent shudders to shake her body at unpredictable intervals. Ava couldn’t identify when she had been thrown into the midst of a full-blown panic attack, but mentally, this is was where she now found herself.

  
    Physically, she found herself in a narrow box just barely tall enough to fit her vertically, with the four walls so close together that her shoulders touched the sides as her back was pressed to the far wall and her immobile fingers, drawn up close to her chest with bent arms, grazed the glass.

  
    Beyond the glass, the frenzy of movement that had encompassed her had stilled, dizzyingly, to a relative halt, but this did not mean that the crowd had dispersed. Instead, the horde of would-be-shoppers remained gathered outside where Ava was now confined. They watched her with wide eyes. Some of their expressions held contempt. _For what they think I am. What I am. A clone._ Tears burned in her eyes, but nobody turned away. If anything, they pressed in closer. Some of their expressions were more curious, regarding her - now that she had been reasonably subdued - as if she were nothing more than an oddity borne of a mechanical mishap, like a fork with five prongs instead of four. Still others viewed her with open malice, as though her mere existence was offensive to them. Common in all of the onlookers’ gazes was what seemed to be an unspoken, but unanimous, agreement: that this thing before them was not human, but less than human. Something other, something apart.

  
    If Ava had been able to muster enough breath to cry, she would have. As it was, she could only fight to stay conscious, though this, too, increasingly felt a losing battle. The seizing of her limbs had not ceased, and what air she could inhale tasted stale and thin inside the box. As her mind scrambled to make any kind of sense of her situation, string together any modicum of coherent thought, she discovered that what she came up with was just as gut-wrenching and twisted as the rest of the events at hand: _it feels like I’m the sole, unwilling occupant of both a coffin and a zoo._

  
     As darkness began to spot her vision, she was acutely aware of how, even still, the watchers eyes stayed on her, observing her desperation with cruel, cold nonchalance. Finally, she felt herself slipping away - _away where? it doesn’t matter, anywhere, anywhere has to be better than this, better than here -_ but one last stab of fear chased her into the abyss: the notion that their eyes would be able to see her, that they’d never stop watching, and that no matter how long or hard she tried to escape them, there was nowhere she would ever be able to hide.

 

* * *

  
      
    There was ice in her hair. Freezing water dripped into her eyes and soaked into what little clothing she wore. Her wet hair clung to her skin. She was curled on a rug on the floor. Ava’s breath hitched, stopping and starting in stuttering gasps. Her hands were clenched into fists. It took considerable willpower to uncurl her fingers. When she successfully did so, she could not suppress a sob of relief from escaping her throat.

  
    She could move again.

  
    Ava opened her eyes. Head lying on the ground, the world was sideways, and what she could make out of it was small. The legs of a chair; the base of a dresser; the ends of a comforter on a flimsy bed; a pair of black boots stepping towards her. Ava squeezed her eyes shut and didn’t look up.

  
    “Eleven hours,” said Neron, with some interest, as though this statement surprised him. His footsteps stopped mere inches from her face, and though she still didn’t look at him, the floor creaked slightly as his weight shifted. Ava guessed that he had squatted down to examine her more closely.

  
    “W-what…” Ava started, but her teeth were chattering too much from the icewater. A shiver wracked her body, and Neron put what she supposed was meant to be a steadying hand on her shoulder. She flinched away violently.

  
    “What the h-hell was that,” Ava managed to get out. She swallowed and involuntarily drew her knees closer to her chest. “What… what the fuck was that.” Her voice was back, but her words came out in a choked, hoarse whisper.

  
    After a long minute, Ava heard Neron stand. She tensed, but no kick came, no wrench of her hair, no brutal grip on her arm yanking her up. There were some footsteps, backing away, then seeming to just meander around the little room. She remained on guard, but as the minute dragged on and some more time seemed to pass with Neron saying nothing else, it became clear that the demon was busying himself with other concerns.

  
    Ava’s heart hadn’t stopped pounding. The chips of ice in her hair were beginning to melt, the water running in tiny rivulets across her scalp, neck, and face. She opened her eyes. Her hair was in her face, so her view was limited, and as her mind wandered in freezing, aching, wake-of-panic delirium, she watched droplets of icewater drip off her nose and onto the floor. Short, staccato sobs shook her curled form at uneven intervals.

  
    It was the first time since her capture that she’d been out of the bathroom unrestrained, but it took all her strength just to concentrate on getting her accelerated breathing and shivering under control. A part of her still felt paralyzed, there, as she tried to sort through the shambles of events that had transpired. Her thoughts were jumbled.

  
    Ava flinched when Neron’s voice broke the silence, but he wasn’t speaking to her; instead, he started to sing, softly, as he continued milling about the motel room. To the tune of the typical nursery rhyme, he sang:

  
  
     _Hush little baby, don’t say a word_  
 _Never mind that voice you heard_  
 _It’s just the beasts beneath your bed_  
 _Waiting, hungry, in your head…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was the most challenging one for me to write so far; it took a lot of effort and consideration, pushing the limits of my abilities as to the kinds of scenes I can portray effectively. As always, I'd love to hear any and all feedback! Every time somebody engages with me on this story, it's a huge motivator to keep writing. Thank you for reading!!


	9. Pillow Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter nine - I know you've been waiting for some more genuine Avalance content, especially since the last few chapters were heavier and very hard on Ava. Hope you enjoy this :)

Chapter 9: Pillow Talk 

 

_\- Now -_

 

  
    Sara was still asleep when Ava woke. The transition from slumber to awareness came suddenly, jarringly; one moment, there was nothing, and the next, her ears were flooded with the thundering of her heartbeat, her chest tight with residual terror - aftershocks of a nightmare, one whose details thankfully hadn’t accompanied the physical symptoms as she woke, but whose contents it took little creativity to guess.

  
    Ava swallowed, then squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. The room - the Captain’s cabin on the WaveRider - was dark, but as she lay there motionless, her eyes slowly adjusted to the shadows. The sole light in the room was the incredibly faint glow of a digital clock on the night table to the right of the bed, but the way it was angled, she couldn’t read it without moving, and Ava wasn’t quite ready to do that just yet.

  
    Her heartbeat was so loud, she almost couldn’t fathom that Sara was sleeping through it. Ava tried to concentrate, to focus on her breathing, and after an indeterminable amount of time working at this, the rushing in her ears receded and was replaced by another, softer, much more welcome sound: the steady breathing of Sara, whose body was currently half-draped over Ava’s. Her head rested on Ava’s chest, left arm across Ava’s torso, the echo of a tight embrace that had loosened in the night. Her right arm was off to the right side, somehow up past Ava’s shoulder, behind the pillow that was currently under her own neck. Both of their pajama shirts were out of place, leaving Sara’s stomach exposed to press against Ava’s ribs, their skin hot where it contacted the other’s. Sara’s left knee pressed against Ava’s inner right thigh. The room was quiet.

  
    Ava was tempted, for a brief moment, to shift herself a little downwards; apparently, she realized now, she had fallen asleep in a semi-sitting position, and now found herself half propped up by a bunching of pillows behind her neck and shoulders. It would have been more comfortable to fully lie down; however, Ava dismissed the notion as swiftly as the idea had arisen as she listened to the rhythmic cadence of Sara’s breathing, felt the accompanying rise and fall of the woman’s chest as it pressed against her own.

  
     _It’s got to be in a law somewhere, that it’s illegal to move while either a puppy or your girlfriend are sleeping on you._

  
    The weight of Sara’s body was soothing. There was something raw and uniquely comforting about Sara, here, asleep. It was a different kind of reassurance than could be given by any type of conscious gesture, or words of support.

  
     _Sara Lance trusts me enough to fall asleep next to me._

  
_With me._

  
    Ava sighed a little, the sound no more pronounced than an extra hiss of air in the still, dark room. Sara didn’t stir, and Ava felt a twinge of guilt; she knew exactly why Sara was sleeping so heavily this morning.

  
    Nine days. It had been nine days since Ava’s rescue, and she’d spent every night here, in the Captain’s cabin. In other circumstances, that setup would have been an exciting prelude to romance. The nightmares, however, had no stake in Ava and Sara’s love life, and were actually proving to be rather intrusive into the rest of Ava’s life in general. She’d get into bed exhausted, but scared to fall asleep.

  
   _Because when he… when I was gone, closing my eyes meant going somewhere worse._

  
    Purgatory had gotten to her, in a different and more visceral way than the other tortures, even the physical pain, ever could. Last night, the anxiety was particularly acute; Sara had stayed up with her the whole time, and Ava suspected she’d been awake for a while after she eventually drifted into a restless sleep, as well.

  
    Sara stirred slightly, but didn’t wake; instead, she nuzzled tighter against Ava, face buried in her pajama t-shirt. Without thinking, Ava reached her arm around Sara, around her torso, until her hand rested on the woman’s bare back - bare because, it seemed, Sara’s shirt had ridden up more in the night than Ava had initially realized.

  
    As Ava’s hand touched the skin of Sara’s back, she halted. Her fingers brushed a line of slight discontinuity in texture, and Ava traced it four, five, six inches before it faded. One of her scars. She froze, but when Sara didn’t stir, she found herself tracing the scar again, then again, and then seemingly of its own accord, her fingers found the other scars on Sara’s back, and methodically began tracing them, too.

  
     _Delicately_. She knew that these marks on Sara were long healed, either the people who caused them long punished, or the circumstance for their cause long past and outgrown. After particularly grueling battles with various adversaries throughout time, the WaveRider crew rotated through Gideon’s medical bay to be absolved of their injuries, but the AI only healed wounds that were currently causing physical harm to the body, which limited its scope to fresh or recent acquisitions. This meant that the scars across Sara’s back - which, as Ava well knew, were mirrored by another set on the front of her torso - were remnants from another life. _Literally, in some cases_. Echoes from other battles, other personal trials, that had shaped the Sara that now shared the bed with her.

  
    “That one was rough,” said Sara quietly, and Ava stopped suddenly. She’d gotten so wrapped up in her thoughts that she hadn't noticed the moment when Sara had become aware of her repetitive movements. Ava glanced down to where the other woman had rested her head on her chest, and since her eyes had adjusted to the dark, she was greeted by Sara’s sleepy gaze staring up at her. Sleepy, but alert. _How long -_

  
    “Don’t stop, it actually feels kind of nice,” Sara said, turning her head away from Ava so she could cuddle a little closer. After a moment’s hesitation, Ava resumed tracing the scars, slowly running her fingers up one, then down another. She shifted from one to another easily; she had Sara memorized.

  
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean - ” _For you to start your day how I start mine, now, mentally taking attendance of the marks left on my body? The things I’ve been through?_ Ava winced internally, glad she hadn’t said that part out loud, but somehow, Sara seemed to know what she meant, even though she’d trailed off halfway through the thought. Some things were better left unarticulated, but that didn’t necessarily mean they went unsaid. And Sara could always read Ava pretty well.

  
    “That first one,” Sara said after a beat, and Ava knew she meant the one she had first commented on, “Was from a whip.”

  
    “Babe, you really don’t have to - ”

  
    “After the shipwreck, near Lian Yu,” Sara pressed on as if Ava hadn’t interjected, “I was stranded at sea, floating on a scrap of wood from the side of the boat for days, before being rescued by a man named Anthony Ivo.” She exhaled quickly in what was almost a half-laugh. “Rescued. That’s what I thought it was, for the longest time. Sure, taking me out of the elements, out of the ocean, technically fits the dictionary definition, but when I woke up, delirious from dehydration, an inch away from heatstroke, with what felt like bone-deep sunburns all over, I was in a cage.”

  
    The extent of Ava’s knowledge of the details of Sara’s background varied. When they’d first met, Ava as an agent of the Time Bureau and Sara as an ex-assassin renegade self-styled time fixer, Ava had done her homework. There was a case file on Sara Lance, but while it may have possessed some key dates and life events, its accuracy and thoroughness was spotty at best, because so much of her life was unconventional. _To say the least._ It didn’t help that the League of Assassins didn’t exactly make a habit of archiving their personnel records in accessible databases. Still, that cursory information was enough, for a time, for Ava to do her job. Once she and Sara had grown closer, however, she’d begun to hear firsthand accounts - of people she’d known, places she’d been, events that had transpired and left some kind of impact on her.

  
  _It’s been quite an experience,_ Ava reflected, _watching Sara Lance come to life in front of me, going from another name on another piece of paperwork - the cause of somebody else’s headache - to this flesh-and-blood wonder of a woman before me now._

  
    Yes, she and Sara had spoken before about Sara’s time in the League, and her past, how it all shaped her. But Lian Yu… of that place, of that time, Ava had only been given glimpses, a comment here, a shard of a memory there. It was an ordeal, Ava knew, and a formative one for certain, but it had also been a dark time - one that most often, Sara still kept close, guarded.

  
    Until now, in bed, the darkness of the room a static thing surrounding them, nine days after Ava was brought back home.

  
     _I don’t want her to feel pressured… but she knows. She knows she doesn’t have to say anything she doesn’t want to, Ava told her self. Listen. She’s opening up._

  
_Let her._

  
    “It was terrifying,” Sara said. “I was disoriented, and panicked, and young, Ava, I was so young, and inexperienced in everything. You wouldn’t recognize that girl.” She paused. “I had to grow up fast.”

  
    Ava said nothing. She was still tracing the scars on Sara’s back. Though there were long beats between Sara’s sentences sometimes, they never seemed to interrupt the flow of her story, they seemed part of it. Sara was choosing her words carefully, that much Ava could tell.

  
    “I wasn’t in the cage for long before Ivo took me out. He worked on the ship, he said he was a doctor working on something extraordinary and he wanted my help. He offered me food, water, dry clothes. They were the first kinds words I’d heard since the whole thing began, and you don’t really know what effect that can have on you - always getting the stick, and never the carrot - until it’s been denied for you either for so long, or so intensely in a short period, that any gesture otherwise feels like a drug. I took his offer.

  
    “What else could I do? I was a woman alone, stranded, I didn’t speak the local language, I was injured, penniless, without any life skills, in the middle of the ocean off a remote, abandoned Chinese island. And the ship was a hostile environment. I needed protection. I needed to stay alive.” Sara took a breath sharply, and when she exhaled, Ava noted it was a little shaky.

  
    “So, I learned. How to operate a radio, how to manually operate the inner workings of a ship. Basic medical expertise, research techniques, survival skills, foreign language.” Sara hesitated, and her voice dropped in volume. “I learned that there are some situations where morality is a luxury, and I learned what decision I’d make if I was forced to choose between holding on to mine and holding on to my life.

  
    “I didn’t know I was adaptable until I had to be, until the choice before me was adapt to the situation - be useful - or don’t, and have the end of that road be the end of me. I adapted to the challenges of my situation as best I could… but sometimes, it wasn’t good enough for my so-called rescuer. He had all the power in that scenario, and he had a temper.”

  
    Ava found the scar in question on Sara’s back again, but instead of tracing it, she pressed her palm flat over it, holding Sara close. It was hard to know what to say; it had been so long since that time in Sara’s life, but clearly it had been a pivotal time whose events had lasting effect on her.

  
    No sound leaked into the room from whatever goings-on were happening on the rest of the ship, and for whatever pastimes the other Legends happened to be busying themselves with that were far away from the Captain’s cabin this morning, Ava was grateful. There were no distractions from Sara, from this moment.

  
  _Just me and my girlfriend bonding over trauma._ The tone could have been dark - and it was, to a degree, solely on the basis of the subject matter, but it wasn’t the kind of ‘dark’ that could ruin a day, or sour the mood of an entire morning, the way a fight or even a particularly nasty petty argument had the ability to do. It was heavy, certainly, but heavy didn’t always mean bad, and the more Sara spoke, the more Ava became aware of another sensation that she hadn’t felt acutely in a long time: safety.  

  
   _I’m here, and she’s here, and we’re safe with each other, and we can talk about this together._

  
_There isn’t anywhere I’d rather be._

  
    “What happened to Ivo?” Ava said finally. If he wasn’t dead, she had half a mind to do it herself. And if he _was_ dead, she had half a mind to give a big ‘fuck you’ to the cardinal rules governing changes to the timeline and paying him a visit back in a time when he was alive, just so she could do the deed herself. It was, of course, hard to hear about anyone hurting Sara, and she knew that her years in the League had been brutal at times; Ava hated even seeing injuries on her after battles from the WaveRider’s various escapades. However, in both those situations, Ava knew that the Sara involved was a capable one, someone who could handle herself, who was an excellent leader and fighter. Most of the time, she posed a far greater threat to her adversaries than any of them did to her. But this… there was something about hearing this story, hearing about this man, that made Ava’s stomach churn.

  
   _It’s because she was so vulnerable._ She was at her most defenseless, and this man exploited that and used it against her. Hearing Sara speak now, too, also made Ava doubt that the particular scar they were discussing at present was the only one she had that was inflicted at the hands of Ivo.

  
    Part of her, in the back of her mind, thought: _well that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?_

  
    “He’s dead,” Sara told her. “Shot.”

  
    “Was it you?”

  
    Sara shook her head. “Oliver. He was already dying, slowly - gangrene, from having his hand cut off, that’s a whole separate story that I won’t get into right now. He had information we needed, and offered it in return for a quick death. We granted the request. I was going to do it,” Sara said. “I almost did. I had the gun pointed at his head, but Oliver stepped in first. Two shots to the chest, and just like that - done.”

  
     _She said ‘done,’ not ‘over,’_ Ava noted. There was a difference. She knew that firsthand.

  
    “Now you,” Sara said, snapping Ava out of her reflection, “Are probably wondering why I’m telling you all of this here, early on a Friday morning.”

  
    Ava grinned a little and reached one hand up - the one not on Sara’s back - and combed her fingers through the other woman’s hair. She felt Sara smile into her shirt at the gesture. “Babe, it’s Saturday morning, and I don’t know what time it is, but I don’t think it’s early anymore.”

  
    “Saturday? You sure?”

  
    Ava’s grin grew wider, and she nodded. “Mm-hmm. Positive.” Sara gave a mock-exasperated sigh.

  
    “Well the WaveRider spends most of its time in a timeless dimension where neither Fridays or Saturdays exist, so don’t hold it against me.”

  
    “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  
    Ava only had time to half-form a smile before Sara surprised her with a kiss, moving quickly and easily from her position cuddling against Ava’s chest to leaning over her, arms braced on either side of Ava’s head, fingers curling into the pillow. The first one was light, fleeting, but a longer one followed, and Sara didn’t tug back until Ava started talking against her lips.

  
    “I _am_ a little curious,” she said, and it wasn’t until she got to ‘curious’ that Sara fully pulled away enough so her words weren’t muffled, “Why this came up today, now.”

  
    Sara smiled and looked down. _God, she’s beautiful._ Even in the dark, Sara Lance took Ava’s breath away. When Sara raised her eyes back to meet Ava’s gaze again, however, they were filled with an emotion that Ava couldn’t quite name. Melancholy, but sharper; her expression, despite embodying an earnest kind of rawness that Ava wasn’t fully prepared for, had an edge to it, even though she was still smiling.

  
    Sara started to shift like she was going to sit up, but halfway through seemed to decide against it, instead choosing to fall onto the bed beside Ava, her head occupying the corner of her pillow, hair splaying out as she sank into the cushion. She stared at the ceiling for a moment. Something brushed Ava’s hand, and within a few seconds, their fingers were intertwined.

  
    “Well.” Sara said finally. Still lying on her back, she turned her head to face Ava, and Ava reciprocated.

  
    “Although I hate that you were ever sent there in the first place, I think we made some real progress with each other as we fought to get out of your purgatory,” she began. “I meant it, in there, when I said I’m always on your team. When you talked about how you feel when we fight, and how your instinct is to go to your corner, well, it got me thinking.”

  
    “Thinking?”

  
    “About how I deal with conflict. About what my instincts are.”

  
    Ava gave Sara’s hand a squeeze, and Sara squeezed back.

  
    “Well it’s like you said in there, isn’t it?” said Ava. “Fight or flight?” She raised her eyebrows. “I’ve seen you in quite a number of tense situations, Captain White Canary, and from that firsthand experience, I can testify which of those I’ve seen you favor.”

  
    Ava had expected the signature sardonic grin, but instead, she was met with a flicker of a smile that crossed Sara’s features before fading a second later. And there’s that expression again, that emotion - or mix of emotions - that I can’t quite name. Sara turned her head back so she was staring at the ceiling again, though she kept holding Ava’s hand tight.

  
    “Those aren’t the only options, you know,” she said quietly. “Fight or flight, that’s how you survive, right? But there’s another road, a third path that isn’t acknowledged so much. Freeze.” She swallowed, and though Ava didn’t take her eyes off Sara, Sara continued looking up into the impermeably dark ceiling.

  
    “Freeze is just like the others in the sense that it’s a _natural_ physical response to an imminent threat - natural, no less legitimate than the others. You come across a bear in the forest, what do you do? You could run, but that could just draw its attention further and risk harm that might otherwise not have been on the table. You could fight, but the bear’s bigger, and stronger, and has a lot more teeth than you.” Sara drew in a shaky breath. When she let it out, it was a little more measured.

  
    “Or, you freeze. Maybe the bear moves on, has better things to do than pick a fight with you. Or maybe the bear is irritable so he attacks anyway, but when you don’t react, he gets bored and moves along. Now maybe you’re injured, maybe you’re not, but either way you’re still breathing.”

  
    Sara wasn’t talking about a bear, and they both knew it. Ava clenched her jaw, the mental image of Sara’s scars - those on her back, one or more of them inflicted by a whip, _a fucking whip_ \- resonating at a new frequency in her mind. She opened her mouth to say - _what?_ There was so much to say, none of it distilled enough to arrange itself into comprehensible words, but Sara kept talking before Ava could say anything.

  
    “I’ve grown a lot,” Sara said. “I’ve learned other ways to deal with threatening situations. I learned how to fight, I trained with every weapon under the sun. After a while, I became a weapon. And I know I’m using a lot of combat examples here, but that extends to other situations too. In arguments, debates, I learned how to speak up for myself, how to say what I mean and defend it, to stand for what I believe in.”

  
    “And you’re damn good at it,” Ava interjected. That got her a smile, a real one this time, and Sara turned back to Ava.

  
    “Hell yeah, I’m good at it,” Sara said. There was a spark in her eyes now, and it didn’t fade as she went on.

  
    “But since your purgatory… well. We came a long way in there together, I think, and I didn’t want that progress to stop. I don’t want it to stop. You told me a few months ago that you wanted our relationship to keep evolving, and I want that too, so recently - well, since purgatory - I’ve really been looking at how I deal with issues that come up. And I realized that despite how far I’ve come, how much I’ve changed and grown and honed my instincts in other areas, when it comes to my past - and even when it comes to explaining, sometimes, why I make the decisions I make, or why I act a certain way - in some of those cases, my first instinct is still to freeze.

  
    “It might not always appear like that, trust me, I know how outwardly stubborn I can be, and I know how that can look like the fight option, and I know how I can use deflections to distract from the core problem, and that might look like flight. But when I’m caught off my guard, by a question or a viewpoint, or when I’m faced with something that might make me draw on experiences from those darker areas of my past, for better or worse - for context or reference, even - and then I’m confronted about it? Or put in a position where I need to explain myself, and I can’t? There’s always a reason, it’s just hard for me to put into words or communicate clearly, and I feel like I’m caught by the bear and my feet are frozen to the spot. You go in your corner, but I feel stuck, and whatever my next move is - yelling or storming away - ” Sara swallowed. “It’s not my reaction to you or whoever I’m with, it’s my reaction to _me_ , to that first overwhelming feeling of being stuck. When you feel like you can’t move, any course of action that leads away feels like an escape worth taking, even if that _away_ in the short term means putting more distance between yourself and the solution to the problem in the long term.”

  
    In contrast to the rest of her story, nearly as populated by long pauses as it had been with actual substance, this last part was spoken fast, the words tumbling out of Sara’s mouth like they were racing to reach the air. And once they got there, they lingered, hanging between them. Sara seemed to be waiting for Ava to react, but for a few seconds, Ava was speechless. _That, and I want to get this response right._ She shifted, so instead of lying on her back with her head turned towards Sara, she now fully faced her, lying on her side, bracing her elbow on the mattress and leaning her head on her hand. She hand to release Sara’s hand to do so, but reached for it again with her other one, and Sara mirrored her position change. Some hair fell in front of Sara’s eyes, and when she didn’t move to tuck it away, Ava did it for her.

  
    “It means a lot to me how much thought you’ve given this,” Ava started after a minute, and when Sara nodded, she continued. “I meant it when I said I wanted this, us, to keep evolving, and I know you were being sincere in purgatory when you said you’re always on my team. I agree that we made some real progress in there,” she said honestly, rubbing her thumb in little circles on the back of Sara’s hand. “But I really appreciate you opening up like this, sharing that part of your past, and…” she concentrated, wanting to make sure she chose the right words. “And offering insight into this part of yourself, so thank you.” Sara squeezed her hand, and, encouraged, Ava pressed on. “What you said really helps me understand you more, and believe me when I say, any day where I get to learn more about you is a good day.”

  
    Ava raised an eyebrow, and Sara cracked a smile. “I mean it,” Ava said. “This thing we’re doing? This talking, and being honest with one another, this communicating how we feel and operate and listening so we can actually apply it and grow?” Ava leaned in, cupped Sara’s face in her hand and tilted it towards her. Sara’s lips parted for her, and the kiss was solid, strong.

  
    “This is how we be good role models for our eight kids,” Ava said when they paused for breath, and the kiss broke off as Sara was overtaken by a fit of giggles that, in addition to directly responding to Ava’s comment, seemed to diffuse whatever nerves that had filled her in anticipation, and then deliverance of, her speech. Sara pressed her lips against Ava’s neck, then settled there, nuzzled against her.

  
    “This is how we become a power couple,” Ava said as a half-afterthought, and Sara snorted.

  
    “Oh, we already earned that title, babe,” she said.

  
    “Hmm, on second thought, I think you might be right on that one,” Ava agreed, grinning widely.

  
    After a few more minutes of just lying there, holding each other and still, blankets cast every which way, their limbs tangled up with each other and the sheets somehow twisted up to ensnare them both, Sara gave a comedically over-exaggerated groan and rolled dramatically over, reaching out to the night table and turning the glowing digital clock so she could read it. Obtaining the object of her pursuit was met with another groan as she flopped back onto the bed.

  
    “What’s the verdict?”

  
    “It’s late.”

  
    Ava raised an eyebrow. “How late?”

  
    Sara bit her lip and peeked sideways at Ava. “Ten thirty,” she said, and Ava rolled her eyes as far to the back of her head as she could manage.

  
    “Oh, the day’s practically over. Wasted. Whatever shall we do.”

  
    Her deadpan response was met by a lightly swung, but perfectly aimed, pillow to the face.

  
    “Hey!”

  
    “You protest, but you’re a morning person too, and you know it.”

  
    Ava threw the pillow back, but didn’t look when she tossed it, and it sailed over Sara and landed on the floor beside the bed. Sara watched its trajectory, then turned back to Ava, the hint of a smirk alighting her features.

  
    “You’re getting that.”

  
    “What? Come on, but - ”

  
    “Let’s go, Director Sharpe! We’ve got a day to seize!” Sara was gaining energy, and Ava begrudgingly had to admit to herself that her growing enthusiasm was infectious.

  
    “Okay, fine, in a minute. What exactly do you have in mind for the remaining daylight hours,” she gave Sara a pointed look, “As few as they may be?”

  
    Sara shook her head, then pushed herself up into a sitting position. Seeing her sit cross-legged like that on the bed, hair messy from sleep, reminded Ava of their brief stay at summer camp.

  
    “That,” Sara said, reaching out for Ava’s arms and, when she was granted them, dragging Ava up to sit upright before her, “Is entirely up to you.”

  
    Ava hesitated a moment, and she knew that Sara probably thought she was brainstorming about how to while away the hours, but that was not the case. No, Ava was just trying to work up the nerve to say the idea that had already occurred to her some time ago.

  
    “Well…” Sara prompted, and Ava cut her off.

  
    “Mattress shopping.”

  
    Sara laughed, but then raised an eyebrow. “Wait, you’re serious? But you like your mattress, I like your mattress - ”

  
    “It’s not for my apartment, Sara.” Ava bounced a little on the bed, and Sara’s eyes widened.

  
    “You want a new mattress… for me? For here?”

  
    Ava nodded, and Sara sputtered. “But there’s nothing wrong with this one! You’ve slept here every night for nine nights straight - ”

  
    “Nine nights gay, you mean - ”

  
    “Babe - ”

  
    “Sara.” Ava reached out between them and clasped both of Sara’s hands in hers. “The fact that I’ve slept here for nine nights in a row,” she tilted her head pointedly, “Is the reason I want to do this. For one, you need it - do you even know when this thing was last replaced? And two…” She paused, because Sara winced visibly.

  
    “It might be…” she bit her lip.

  
    “What?”

  
    “I’m not sure if it’s ever been… since Rip…”

  
    “Oh, my god, Sara.” Sara looked sheepish.

  
    “I told you in purgatory I usually just flip them over, I know it functioned as a metaphor there but I also wasn’t exactly kidding about that particular example…”

  
    “Wow. Okay, first, my question was rhetorical, because I know the answer - this mattress was replaced ten months ago, along with the mattresses of all the other cabins after the Bureau did its annual review of the ship’s amenities and found them lacking, but second, _gross_ that you thought that and didn’t speak up about it.”

  
    Sara shrugged, pouting a little. “Do you still love me?” There was mischief in her eyes, and Ava gave her a playful punch to the shoulder.

  
    “Shut up. Of course I do. But still, ew.” Sara sighed in a somewhat conciliatory way, and taking it as a win, Ava got back to what she’d originally been saying.

  
    “Secondly,” she said, “This is a good thing, because it means - ”

  
    “You want to stay over more.” Now Sara was starting to come around, Ava could tell.

  
    “I mean, if that’s okay,” Ava added hurriedly. “I know it’s been an adjustment, having me on the WaveRider this last week, but…”

  
    “The best kind of adjustment,” Sara said, and Ava jerked her chin towards the cabin door.

  
    “You sure you’re speaking for the rest of the crew, who have to deal with the layered dynamic of a) having an extra person on board, and b) having both their moms home at once?”

  
    Sara kissed her quick, a peck on the lips, their hands still clasped between them. “I’m speaking for me, but as for the crew - you’re family, and they all know it. Not just mine - theirs too. Ours. Maybe it’s an adjustment, but it’s one that everybody here is more than happy to make.”

  
    Ava forgot to verbally respond to that, because inside, she was glowing, and it took her a few seconds to put words to the sensation that swooped over her. Belonging, family, acceptance, home - they were, in many ways, unfamiliar concepts to her in many ways, and she was still learning what they could be, what they could mean to her.

  
     _Is this what family feels like? Real family, something good, people who want you around, who lift you up and support you?_

  
_Jesus, this fucking fantastic._ It was dizzying.

  
    “I guess it’s settled then,” Sara said, and her smile was warm. Ava suspected that she knew, at least in part, what she had been feeling just now. “So if that’s the only item on the agenda, we’ll be done by early afternoon, that means we can grab a late lunch - ”

  
    “Whoa, babe, no way we’ll be done by early afternoon. I’d estimate three or four, and that’s if we left like, now, and made excellent time, and found our dream mattress at the first place we go to.”

  
    “The first place?” Sara scrunched up her face. “Ava, come on, how hard can it be to find a mattress? And we’ll be completely focused, we’re not even looking for anything else, so there don’t be any distractions. Look how fast we got it done in purgatory! We even know how long of a warrantee we want already, so we don’t have to stress about that,” she added, and the sun shone inside Ava again. Sara kept going. “Also, how are we going to pay for this? I mean, I have some money saved up for emergencies, but…” she trailed off, and Ava jumped right in to the wake of her fading sentence.

  
    “One, the mattress thing in purgatory was a demon-induced fever dream that tailored itself to my anxieties and didn’t operate by the real world’s rules of linear time and space, so I can tell you one thing for certain, real mattress shopping is absolutely nothing like that. Two, as for how we’re going to pay for it - well, we can talk about it there, but we don’t have to dip into your emergency fund, because I am an adult who knows how to budget.”

  
    “Ouch, harsh!”

  
    “Not sorry,” Ava shot back, but they were both grinning. “My point is, this is going to be an all-day affair, so mentally prepare yourself.” With that, she scooted past Sara to the end of the bed and stepped off to the side, picking up the cast-away pillow and tossing it over her shoulder without looking. She heard Sara swat it away. Without turning the lights on, she went to the dresser and started grabbing clothes for the day.

  
    “Mentally prepare myself to spend an entire day out with my favorite person in the world? I think I can handle that,” Sara said. Ava started; she’d expected Sara to be speaking from across the room, fixing the bed, but instead she spoke right into her ear - well, as close as she could, given the height difference - and wrapped her arms around Ava’s midsection from behind. Sara started rocking her balance from one foot to the other, and Ava laughed, then went along with it, until they were just swaying in the dark, the clothes and the rest of the day becoming, for a moment, a future on hold.

  
    “You know,” Sara said, her tone shifting slightly, “This is going to be our first big purchase together, as a couple. And mattresses, well, they’re like shoes, aren’t they? Got to be broken in…”

  
    A little pinch at the lobe of her ear, which she knew was from Sara’s teeth, made her gasp. It was followed by a peppering of soft kisses down her neck, and Sara’s hand slipping under her shirt, beginning to wander upwards. Ava shivered, and her heart quickened, but even as she leaned back, pressing closer to Sara, she hesitated, and in a second, Sara’s hand dropped, and instead tugged on the crook of her arm, beckoning Ava to face her.

  
    “Hey, what is it?” Sara asked, softly, and something in Ava just _melted_ at how fast her tone changed, how immediately she switched gears.

  
_She knows. She can tell that something’s up, she always can._ And Ava was incredibly grateful for it, but she didn’t know how to articulate -

  
    “I’m sorry, I just… I mean, I want to celebrate, you’re right that it’s an exciting step, but I…” She stumbled over her words, but Sara waited patiently for her to work out what she was trying to say.

  
    “I…” Ava swallowed. Why is this so hard? “I’m just not sure… not sure I’m ready - ”

  
    “There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Sara said, firmly, and Ava smiled weakly, eyes cast down at their bare feet on the floor, which were almost touching, they were standing so close.

  
    “I can’t even explain it, I don’t know why it’s an issue, I just…”

  
     _Feel like it’s going to take a little more time before I’ll be ready to make myself vulnerable  in that way again, even with you? Not because of you, but because there’s more than one kind of intimacy, and mine was violated in a lot of ways, and I’m not quite sure how those two link together but they’re definitely linked, and I love you so much, and this won’t be forever or maybe even for that much longer, I don’t know, but I might need a little more time to…_

  
    “You don’t need to explain anything,” Sara said, interrupting Ava’s rambling thoughts and snapping her back to the present. When Ava was silent, Sara put two fingers under her chin and tilted her head up so instead of staring down at their feet, their eye contact was clear and uninterrupted. Sara’s eyes were wide, sincere.

  
    “You never need to explain why you don’t want to, okay? If you don’t, I don’t - it’s that easy, and there’s no pressure.” Sara stood up on her toes and rose to Ava’s lips, where she planted a single kiss, delicately, before sinking back down. She rubbed Ava’s arm reassuringly.

  
    “Now,” she said, “You said you did want to celebrate? Well, let’s figure something out, I’m sure between the two of us we can - ” she paused when Ava’s eyes flickered to the floor, then back up again. “Unless you already have something in mind?” she ventured encouragingly.

  
    “Well, I was thinking, maybe a movie night?” Ava suggested, and at the suggestion, Sara nodded enthusiastically.

  
    “That sounds great! We can get some food, put on the fluffiest of our pajamas, kick back on our brand new mattress… gather together an army of pillows, that’s a must, and s’mores, you know it’s not a real movie night without chocolate…”

  
    “S’mores? Don’t you need fire for those?”

  
    Sara waved her hand off to the side dismissively. “I guess we have the microwave as a last resort, but come on, I’m sure Mick could whip something up for us.”

  
    “Excuse me, Captain Lance, but I’m pretty sure that would be a fire hazard,” Ava said sternly, and Sara snorted.

  
    “Mick is a fire hazard,” she retorted, and she put her arms around Ava, clasping her hands together behind her neck, forearms resting on Ava’s shoulders. Ava followed suit, embracing Sara so her hands clasped together and rested at the small of Sara’s back. Sara inched forward so her toes were on top of Ava’s, and with that, Ava began to sway the two of them back and forth again, playfully, easily.

  
    “And did the Director Sharpe half of this power couple have a movie in mind?” Sara asked.

  
    Again Ava hesitated, but this time she was working up the nerve to say what she wanted to.

  
    “I thought that maybe we could watch…” she mumbled something, but Sara interjected.

  
    “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.”

  
    Ava sighed. “I was thinking, you know, if you wanted, we could watch… Disney movies?”

  
    Sara’s eyebrows shot up. Ava braced herself for the reaction - for her girlfriend, the ex-assassin’s, reaction.

  
    “Which one?” Sara asked in a neutral tone, and Ava continued to sway them back and forth. She steeled herself for whatever would come of her suggestion and just went for it.

  
    “…All of them?”

  
    Yes, she wanted to celebrate their big purchase, and yes, she wanted to have a fun night in with her girlfriend, but there was another motivation, too, one that wormed its way into the front of her mind despite her attempts to push it down. She couldn’t get out of her head the way that Neron had used her lack of a childhood against her, taunting her over things she hadn’t experienced, things she wouldn’t understand. It was one of the lesser of the evils inflicted upon her, but here and now, after those scars and bruises that were able to be healed had been so treated, those taunts remained, like fishhooks snagged onto her anxieties.

  
   _Clone. Not a real person. Not worthy. Not enough_.

  
    Well, this was one aspect of her past, or lack of it, that she could address, and she intended to do so. She was going to dislodge this particular fishhook; nobody was going to be able to use this to wound her, to make her feel inferior or small, ever again.

  
    Ava didn’t know what she expected, but it definitely wasn’t a whoop of delight and a sloppy kiss on the cheek that Sara achieved by literally hopping upwards, then bouncing back down and initiating a flurry of room-tidying. Ava had never seen her make the bed so fast.

  
    “Well, don’t just stand there, help me out over here! We’ve got a mattress to buy, a lot of movies to watch, and a metric heck-ton of songs for you to learn by heart and commit to your eternal memory.”

  
    “Songs?”

  
    Instead of answering, Sara just shot her a wolfish grin, then rummaged in the dresser for what was definitely not long enough to grab any matching clothes and whirled around, tossing the bundle of assorted items at Ava, who caught them as best she could.

  
    “Why are these lights still off, the day has officially begun, let’s go, we have a lot to do,” Sara said, dashing to the light switch by the door and flicking it upwards. The room was instantly awash in light, momentarily blinding them both, their eyes having become well adjusted to the dark over the course of the morning.

  
    When she finally managed to blink away the spots of color before her eyes that signaled her brain trying desperately to keep up with the rapidly escalating pace of the events around her, Ava saw Sara standing before her. Her hair was a frizzy mess and, aside from being snarled from sleep, stuck out from static in unpredictable and comedic directions. One of the sleeves of her short-sleeved pajama shirt was half-folded up, and in her apparent haste to vault over the bed and leap headfirst into an active day, her pajama shorts had gotten caught on something, and now were tugged down low on the left side, making an odd diagonal from where they properly clung to her right hip, to a spot on the other side, between her left hip and upper left thigh. The wardrobe malfunction exposed a pair of bright blue underwear with…

  
    “Do you have…” Ava squinted. “Orange fish on your underwear?”

  
    Sara laughed, a clear, hearty sound, and ran her fingers through her wild hair - or tried to, and got them caught halfway through, and had to extricate them carefully to keep from pulling the hair too hard.

  
    “Yes I do, and the fish’s name is Nemo, and don’t worry, love, you’re going to learn all about him,” she said, and with that, she darted forward, snatching up Ava’s hand and whirling her around, tugging her towards the bathroom so they could get changed and get ready for the world outside the WaveRider, the world of mattress shopping and Disney movies and being a real, adult couple.

  
    Ava couldn’t stop smiling.

  
    _It's going to be a good day._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to everyone who's stuck with me so far on this story, and to any new people that have found it! I know I said I'd update on Thursday nights, and that lasted two weeks before I fell behind. My internship got crazy, and I've been doing a lot of studying, but in between all that and my last update, I managed to write 7,000+ words of pure Avalance to add to this story, and had a lot of fun doing it :) To everyone who takes the time to comment - I really appreciate it!! Every interaction with a reader makes me smile, and to be honest, the encouraging notes in this last week are what motivated me to get this chapter up as fast as I could. Y'all are the best! I'll have the next chapter up when I can. - PV


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